


BLUE BLAZES

by spicyshimmy



Series: MIRRORED [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Mirror Universe, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-12
Packaged: 2017-12-18 08:59:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are infinite universes out there. Spock and James T. Kirk are basically destined to meet in some combination of every one. Thanks to a little interference from an ion storm over the Halkan homeworld, Jim learns that, in one of them, Spock has a beard. And Vulcan eyeshadow. And a host of problems with a little thing called the Terran Empire. <i>Jim knew something was definitely up when he beamed aboard the ship and Spock had a beard.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Middlemarching/myopichobbit ruthlessly beta'ed this and it was much appreciated. This fic draws on a combination of AOS comics mirrorverse canon and also heavily influenced by the Mirror, Mirror episode of Star Trek: TOS. Part of a series of fics involving Mirror Spock and James T. Kirk. It will likely include other pairings in the future, but for the purposes of part one, that's all she wrote!

_Captain's log, stardate... unknown. During an ion storm the landing party has beamed back to the Enterprise and found it and the personnel aboard changed. The ship is subtly altered physically. Behavior and discipline has become brutal, savage._

Jim knew something was definitely up when he beamed aboard the ship and Spock had a beard.

It wasn’t a full-faced thing, more of a goatee deal, dark and clipped around the mouth. That kind of facial hair didn’t just grow overnight, certainly not over the course of a two-hour landing mission on Halkan while Jim contemplated a future of never having to say the words _dilithium mining_ ever again. And since Spock wasn’t a practical joker—which _sucked_ , considering he _was_ practical, so he was at least halfway there all the time—and he was wearing a blue jacket with epaulets instead of his science officer’s blue shirt like regulation required, and his eyes had this hard edge to them Jim didn’t recognize, and the beam technician looked like he was about to vomit all over the beaming pad...

Jim knew something was _definitely_ up.

Also—for the sake of being thorough, which Spock liked about as much as he let on, and Jim liked _way_ more than he let on—he wasn’t wearing _his_ yellow shirt, either. The shirt was still yellow, but that was where all resemblance ended: because it didn’t have sleeves, for one thing, and there was a sash around the waist and a whole mess of sparkly medals on the front, and Bones had put his hand on Jim’s shoulder, which meant he was about to say something along the lines of _What in the blue blazes is going on here, Spock? Is it some Vulcan Halloween trick we don’t know about?_ and that wouldn’t be good.

There was a time and a place for every Bones metaphor.

This wasn’t either.

Jim stepped forward off the beaming pad right as Spock pounded his chest and executed a hail-slash-salute that would’ve been hilarious if Jim hadn’t been diverting all auxiliary power to the _figure this the hell out_ systems, manual override.

‘Captain,’ Spock said.

‘Now _hang on_ , Spock—’ Bones began.

Jim cleared his throat and mirrored the salute-slash-hail with his bare arm, punching the collection of sparkly medals on his chest a little too hard _into_ his chest. He knew the face Bones was making over his shoulder, and he had to keep going like knew what was happening before that face had a chance to become words.

‘Rough beam-up there, Mr. Spock,’ Jim said.

And it had been—considering the ion storm over the Halkan homeworld, the flash of ionized lightning making the hairs on Jim’s arms stand on end, and the long, sickening pause in between definite places when Jim could literally feel his atoms being broken down, scrambled up, and reassembled. There’d been a moment, more like a few moments, ugly and nauseating, when those atoms lost focus and started to scatter, and Jim knew Bones was going to be going on about it basically for the rest of their five-year mission, while the worst part of it was, Jim couldn’t exactly blame him.

It wasn’t the same as those old-school simulations of being spaced had felt—if only because those simulations had been sweaty and uncomfortable at their most accurate, boring at their least, and Jim tended to use that time floating around in a training suit studying with a PADD he’d snuck in for other tests that were actually worth a damn.

No, this... This was losing yourself, _completely_ ; it was realizing you weren’t anything more than a bunch of molecules that, for no reason whatsoever, decided to stick together as a crew for a while, but if even one of them was reassigned or a whole bunch of them got lost, then you didn’t have a crew, a ship, a body, yourself— _anything_.

Not that Jim didn’t enjoy the feeling. Hell, what was there not to enjoy? It was adrenaline in its purest form, a rush like practically no other, which was why Bones hated it and why Jim grinned all the way through it.

Except that particular beam had gone on twice as long as it should, with ten times the amount of _Scotty, are you scrambling me like breakfast right now, or what?_ And now that it was over, Spock had a goatee and Jim’s sleeves were gone, so.

Yeah.

‘Indeed, captain,’ Spock replied.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it, sir.’ Whoever was running the transport, it wasn’t Scotty. Jim couldn’t hold that against him. Well, he _could,_ because nothing like this had ever happened with Scotty at the helm, guiding Jim’s fragile particles from one area of space to the next. He was the beam master—and once he’d got more than three drinks in him, he wouldn’t answer to anything else.

But Jim was still _reasonably_ sure that while Scotty’s talents trumped those of most engineers on the Enterprise, he hadn’t cleared anyone onboard who could warp the fabric of _reality_.

Or put facial hair on a Vulcan without their consent. Unless Scotty’d beamed up the beard, too—and this was just getting weirder by the lightsecond.  

‘The storm’s interference?’ Spock’s question was simple, but the engineer flinched. ‘Or your own ineptitude?’

Jesus.

Spock with a beard was _scary_.

Not that Spock without a beard wasn’t scary: he asked foreboding questions in that same, calm, do-you-feel-your-piss-turning-to-ice-yet voice. He even kept his hands folded behind his back the whole time. But he was less direct about it. With Spock, you could never be _sure_ he was calling you an idiot right to your face.

Unless you were Jim.

Jim was always sure.

‘It’s fine,’ Jim said, swallowing a very uncaptainlike _uh_ right there at the beginning of his sentence. He stepped on the urge to slap Spock in his stiff Vulcan shoulder next. ‘I mean, _I’m_ fine. I think. I’ll wanna have Bones here check me out in medical, just to be sure.’

Jim shared a look with Bones, praying he got the message. Smart guy, Mccoy; great doctor. But sometimes—to use one of his beloved metaphors—he got the horse and the cart all mixed up.

True to form, Bones wrinkled his nose and gave Jim the big ol Georgian stink-eye. So, yeah, he was reading Jim’s signals loud and clear. He just wasn’t happy about it.

Spock paused, like while he’d been trying to incinerate the engineer through the power of his _Vulcan_ stink-eye alone, he’d forgotten Jim and Bones were even still standing there.

‘Of course, captain.’ He inclined his head, which was—weird again. Like Jim had to get permission to leave the transport room from his own first officer. Although most of that Jim could chalk up to projecting his mounting panic on their surroundings. ‘Your health is of the utmost importance. I shall handle this punishment personally.’

‘Uh, sure.’ Jim’s arms were getting cold—or maybe the goosebumps were something different. Ion disturbance. Ripped fabric of space-time disturbance. Without Scotty around to blither about the molecules, Jim couldn’t be sure. And his normally-reliable science officer was, as previously covered, scary. ‘You do that. Let’s—come on, Bones. I _could_ have the vapors.’

He booked it, walking down the hall as fast as he could while still looking casual, maintaining the not uncaptainlike everything-is-under-control strut. Bones had long legs, so it didn’t take him long to scurry up behind Jim, hissing in his ear like a Cardassian with food poisoning.

‘Jim, what in _the blue blazes_ ,’ he began.

‘Not now, Bones.’

‘But the _beard,_ man.’ Jim didn’t need to look to know Bones was drawing his fingers down his face, in an imitation of the goatee. ‘If I thought he looked like the devil _before_ , well...’

‘Just give me a second, Bones.’

They passed a clutch of crewmen in the halls, all of them in uniforms that matched Jim’s own. The colors were Federation regulation, but that was about the only similarity. Several of them gave Jim the hail salute he’d tried out in the transporter room. He did it back, simultaneously drawing attention away from Bones, still muttering over his shoulder.

The med bay, at least, was in the same place, although the doors were painted with an unfamiliar crest—a sword plunging straight through a planet’s core.

‘Cheerful,’ Jim said. ‘Don’t you think that’s cheerful?’

‘You wanna know what I think?’ Bones said. Which was about the moment Jim realized his mistake. ‘I think you just left a bucket of chum alone with a _hungry shark_ in the transporter room.’

‘Actually, not really.’ The best way to handle Bones effectively, Jim had learned over the long, difficult years, was to distract him from the stuff that was already distracting him. He’d needed to develop an antidote early on, because otherwise, one or the both of them would’ve suffered a hell of a lot more than Bones suffered as a general rule. Kind of an Ouroboros deal, like matter meeting antimatter. As a strategy it _really_ worked, because when Bones was able to be pissed at Jim, it diverted his attentions from being pissed in the more cosmic sense, which was too much for his shoulders all of the time. It wasn’t gonna crush him; not on Jim’s watch. ‘Cause, you know. Vulcans. They’re basically vegetarian,’ Jim explained. ‘So if I’d left a bucket of dandelion greens or spinach in there, it’d be more of a—hang on, you don’t think Spock’s gonna, like, _spank_ that guy or anything, do you?’

Bones blinked. Internal crisis, however temporarily, _definitely_ averted. ‘All I’m saying is, that man up there was scared stiff, Jim. You see the way Spock looked at him? _Devil eyes_.’

‘Yeah, Bones. I saw.’ Jim made a quick sweep of medical, then remembered there wasn’t much he could expect to recognize, since whenever he was in the bay, it was because parts of him were swollen or throbbing or mysteriously nonresponsive, and he paid more attention to body malfunctions than decor any day. ‘But, c’mon, this is _Spock_ we’re talking about. He’ll read the poor sonofabitch the rulebook until he falls asleep or his eyeballs melt or he just plain loses the will to live, but not...’

Even as Jim said it, he knew he wasn’t buying it. Not from himself. It was a good thing Bones was too distracted by the state of his domain to listen to Jim’s half-assed attempt to rationalize the irrational.

Also known as their lives now, but that was exactly why they loved it. Bones too, even though he pretended he didn’t, never with any greater effect than to himself.

‘Somebody’s been re-arranging my damn files, Jim! And these experiments—my God, if you’ve been flirting with the nurses while they were supposed to be monitoring the progress of these chemicals, Jim, I swear I’ll—’

‘Now who’s the bucket of chum and who’s the shark?’ Jim leaned back against the desk as Bones tore through a pile of PADDs, then froze, fingertips against the Formica.

‘Acid stain,’ Bones said. ‘Spilled it there just three weeks ago. But everything else, Jim—it’s like we’ve gone straight through the looking glass and all we’re waiting for is the white rabbit!’

‘Bones,’ Jim replied, ‘where do you even come up with this stuff?’

It was a stop-gap, a pause in time, buying Jim a few extra moments to work out what sounded impossible from what was possible anyway, and the entire spectrum of _what might’ve happened_ lying somewhere in between. Through the looking glass, Bones’d said, and although there were no white rabbits—not yet—Spock had a beard and Jim had no sleeves and everybody had sashes.

‘And what do you suppose _this_ is?’ Bones flipped a PADD around to show Jim the logo on the screen: another planet with a sword piercing the core and, beneath that, _EMPIRE ALLIES_.

‘I’m beginning to think we’re in the blue blazes, Bones,’ Jim said. ‘This is your lucky day.’

‘You and your definition of _luck_ ,’ Bones replied.

Jim stepped forward, putting a calming hand on his shoulder. ‘Hey, I happen to be talking to the human doctor who assisted a _Gorn_ shooting out lizard spawn like rapid phaser fire and _twice_ as deadly,’ he said. ‘If anyone can handle the blue blazes, Bones, you’re exactly the man for the job.’

‘Quit saying that phrase, Jim. You’re _cheapening_ it.’

That was the point; Jim shrugged it off. ‘Empire Allies,’ he said instead. ‘Spock with a beard. Planet with a sword through it. You know, Bones, I don’t think you were too far off when it came to your looking glass theory. You ever heard of an ion storm that’d—’

‘Keptin.’ The med bad doors zipped open and Chekov was standing in the doorway. He looked the same as always: pale, skinny and downright out of place in the sleeveless uniform. His hands were behind his back. It wasn’t _exactly_ a relief to see him but Jim wasn’t complaining, either. Chekov had the decency not to have a beard. Good sign. But he also didn’t have any kind of visible injury that would’ve brought him down to medical in the first place. He was sweating and a little squinty, probably due to some latent teenage hormone problem that Jim wasn’t about to dig into. ‘Mister Spock informed the bridge of your arriwal. Are you feeling unwell?’

‘Nah, Chekov, I’m fine. Just a little,’ Jim rubbed his stomach, of all things, ‘rough landing. You know?’

He’d be feeling a lot _better_ if he didn’t have an ensign from some sort of _alternate reality_ staring him down like Jim had kissed his girlfriend last night or punched him in the gut, but a guy couldn’t get everything.

‘Zat _is_ a shame.’ Chekov stepped into the room and pulled out a phaser. From where Jim was standing, it didn’t look like it was set to stun. ‘Zis would be so much easier had you been prewiously subdued.’

‘Jim,’ Bones said.

Four security officers piled in behind Chekov. They weren’t faces Jim recognized, which worked in his favor, since he wouldn’t have to feel too bad about smashing them in.

‘Chekov.’ Jim backed up, away from Bones. ‘What the hell, buddy? Is this any way to greet your captain?’

‘Have you _lost_ your damn _mind?_ ’ Bones added, unhelpfully drawing some attention his way. Exactly what Jim hadn’t wanted.

At least he could still count on Bones no matter what looking glass they’d gone through.

‘Sorry, keptin,’ Chekov said. He didn’t look it. ‘But no one knows better zan _you_ zat zis is the fastest way for an officer to rise in the ranks. With you dead, we can _all_ benefit.’

There wasn’t time to parse the thought. It was obviously insane and Jim couldn’t argue with crazy. But he _could_ duck a phaser blast, throwing the nearest security officer into Chekov and kicking the next one who tried to grab him, high in the stomach. The third officer clipped Jim in the chin with a massive fist and sent him sprawling, catching his back on the edge of Bones’ precious table. He was gonna have a hell of a bruise there later; that was what he got for coming to med bay without any injuries. Some kind of karmic, poetic justice crap. Jim waited for the man who’d thrown the lucky punch to move within range, then kicked him in the chest, using the leverage of the table behind him so he wouldn’t fall over.

Too bad none of these guys was Cupcake. He was starting to feel downright nostalgic.

Chekov moved in a blur of gold. Jim threw himself around the neck of the first red shirt who’d gotten back up, shouting for Bones—who was already behind Chekov with a hypo in one hand. The little guy dropped as soon as the tranquilizer hit his bloodstream. Jim’s neck felt a pinch of sympathy. He’d been there and he hadn’t wished it on his worst enemy, although at the time his worst enemy hadn’t been one of the best in his crew.

‘Jesus.’ Jim pulled his captive into a headlock, tightening his biceps around a thudding pulse until it slowed toward unconsciousness. ‘What happened to _first do no harm_ , Bones?’

‘Do you know what’d happen to that kid if I let _you_ beat on him?’ Bones kicked the phaser out of Chekov’s prone hand, sending it skittering across the floor. ‘You aren’t exactly pulling your punches, you know.’

‘I was fighting for my life!’

‘Tell that to his glass jaw,’ Bones said. He crouched over Chekov after disarming him, checking his vitals.

‘Captain.’ Jim’s new friend with the disturbingly thick neck was choking. ‘Captain—please, I tried to tell him it was a bad idea. You’re the terror of the Empire; there’s no way we could take you down with just five guys. But he wouldn’t listen. Crazy Russians…’

‘Doctor McCoy.’ Jim tightened his hold. He wasn’t in the mood. ‘Would you call security, please? See if we can do something about our friends, here?’

‘I’m a doctor, not a communications officer,’ Bones replied, but he went for his comm anyway.

Jim had a feeling the only reason he obeyed was because he’d been a part of dealing the damage to begin with. Either that or he was way more freaked out than he’d bothered to let on—and _that_ was scarier than Spock with a beard or a Chekov that had tried to kill them put together, with a dash of Khan firing on the Enterprise for good measure.

*

Jim was half expecting the cleanup crew to try and take him out, so it was a relief when they hauled Chekov and the others off to the brig without whipping out their phasers and attempting mutiny first. Seeing Chekov unconscious, the last glimpse of him nothing but his scuffed boots dragging along the floor as he was carted out the door, was enough to keep Jim from making the joke he wanted to—about how they should’ve expected this kind of treatment as punishment for not having beards like Spock did.

It wouldn’t have made Bones laugh anyway.

Tough crowd, Bones.

‘The usual treatment, captain?’ the head of security asked, standing at attention.

Jim hail-slash-saluted and confirmed, since there was little room for a captain to make any mistake or show any signs of weakness aboard this Enterprise, and Chekov had been prime example of that already. Also, Jim needed company gone and otherwise occupied while Bones and he checked out the computer on their personnel files and dealt with whatever they found there.

Only it was worse—so much worse—than anything Jim had been expecting.

_Leonard McCoy. Doctor. Bleeding heart, but skilled in his field. Worth keeping him alive for the time being._

‘Well,’ Bones said, his forehead wrinkling in new and unusual ways, ‘isn’t _that_ just _peachy_. Just what every man wants to read about himself. Good to have around, so at least nobody’s gonna shoot me. Not _yet_ , anyway.’

But what they found on file for Bones wasn’t half as bad as the list of accomplishments under Jim’s name. _James Tiberius Kirk. Captain: Enterprise._ That was the only part he recognized. The rest involved assassination, murder, brazen acts of ruthlessness and lunacy, followed by the occasional glowing mention of what looked like genocide.

‘Well, Bones,’ Jim said, switching off the screen, ‘it looks like we’re not in Iowa anymore.’

‘Or Georgia,’ Bones replied. ‘I don’t care what the damn machine says, Jim. That isn’t you.’

‘And I’m betting you’ll be a whole lot harder to kill than that file suggests, too.’ Jim grinned. Bones wasn’t buying it either, but the point remained. Friendly, despite the extenuating factors, which Jim tried his best not to let bother him no matter where he was, on whatever side of the mirror. ‘So there we have it. Beamed up during an ion storm from the Halkan homeworld and we landed on this ship, where Chekov wants me dead, my shirt doesn’t have sleeves, Starfleet’s some kind of conquering empire, and Spock’s got a beard.’

Bones lifted one eyebrow—doing his finest Spock impression, which made Jim feel better. More at home, even if he was in some kind of parallel universe. This made _three_ Spocks he’d dealt with now. The idea that there might be more of them out there was... _something_. ‘ _Those_ are the important details in your mind, man?’ Bones finally asked.

‘Yeah,’ Jim said. ‘Yeah, I know—I should’ve led with the beard. C’mon, Bones, you’ve gotta admit—that _is_ the weirdest part.’

‘Weirdest, sure. But it’s not the most _lethal_.’

‘Now, you don’t exactly know that.’ Jim knew what game they were playing—the _keep up the banter to keep their heads_ game. Not one of his favorites—there was no pinning the tail on anything and far too much clothes to make even the top ten—but it was a good one all the same. The fact that neither of them wanted to talk about the deeper changes, what it all meant, wasn’t much of a surprise. Keeping a head above water was all about staying light. Jim couldn’t let them get weighed down by anything, not while they still had to be on their toes. So Spock’s darker looks, the intensity in his voice, that thin, icy line of fear he’d commanded—they couldn’t talk about that. Not if they wanted to keep their minds clear. ‘Who knows what Vulcan facial hair can do?’

‘Not something I ever wanted to _have_ to think about.’

‘Well, don’t say I never take you anywhere nice.’

Bones was gearing up for a gorgeous grumble when the doors to the med bay opened again; Jim was already on his feet and reaching for his phaser when Spock stepped through. He still had the beard. Jim knew he shouldn’t, but he let his weapon go.

‘A most eventful day, captain,’ Spock said.

‘If you try to kill me next, I’m going to get spoiled, Spock,’ Jim replied. ‘Wouldn’t want to inflate my ego any bigger than it already is.’

‘Captain, were I to make an attempt on your life, I can assure you, you would not see it—or me—coming.’ Spock’s voice was the same but it was different; inflection familiar, depth foreign. ‘The crew is, however, restless. Our talks with the Halkans have gone on too long already.’

‘Is that why Chekov tried to off me?’ Jim pushed his fingers against his lower back, testing the blooming bruise for how sore he was gonna feel later. Pretty sore. ‘He could’ve just told me his ass was going numb.’

‘Ensign Chekov is…young,’ Spock said. ‘And youth comes with a degree of impatience.’

‘He said he wanted a _promotion_.’

‘He wished to emulate your own meteoric rise to the captain’s chair—no doubt by following in your footsteps and eliminating current command.’ Spock folded his arms and leaned back against the wall. He was wearing tall boots that stopped just below the knees. By the looks of them, they’d been polished that morning. ‘Just as you did, when you assassinated Captain Pike.’

There was a ringing in Jim’s ears, faint and distorted. An aftereffect of the ion storm—or maybe the shock of being jumped by his own crew. It didn’t feel great. If Bones hadn’t been there, Jim might’ve given in to the sudden, sweeping dizziness—just let his legs fold under him and drop like _he_ was the one who’d been shot with the hypo. But Bones _was_ there—immediately there—with a hand on Jim’s shoulder like he was dying to wrestle him down into a sickbed. Would’ve, maybe, if Spock hadn’t been there, too.

Making sudden movements around this crew seemed like a one way ticket to unnecessary phaser fire. And _here,_ nobody seemed keen on setting them to stun.

If Jim was a different sort of captain on a different sort of Enterprise, then Pike had to have been different, too. The man Jim remembered—the one he’d mourned—didn’t factor into the picture.

It only took him a second to collect himself, but Spock was looking at him funny, the same way he appraised a reading he didn’t understand on the scanner.

‘Not used to you complimenting my prowess like that, Spock.’ Jim cleared his throat. He rubbed the back of his head, keeping his hands busy. ‘You keep bringing up ancient history like that, you’re gonna make me blush.’

‘Captain?’ Spock’s eyebrows worked the same no matter what reality he came from.

That didn’t seem fair.

‘ _Brain_ damage,’ Bones muttered, lifting a round scanner over Jim’s cheek then hovering around to the nape of his neck. ‘It was only a matter of time before _somebody_ cracked your cantaloupe.’

‘The Halkans, Mr. Spock.’ Jim drew the focus back to him, despite pointed sabotage from Bones. That was going in his file when they got back. _If_ they—well. ‘And if the crew thinks it’s boring up here, they should try wading through negotiations with the landing party. Now _that’s_ a nightmare.’

‘Many of the officers do not understand why we are persisting in negotiations at all,’ Spock said. ‘The Empire’s authorization for the use of lethal force came in three hours prior. It is my recommendation that we first target the most populated cities on their home planet—the better to weaken their resolve.’

‘Do you hear what you’re _saying?_ ’ Bones’ interest in Jim’s mental trauma took an untimely backseat. ‘Spock, you can’t _possibly_ be serious. You’re talking about genocide, man! You of all people—’

‘Bones,’ Jim said.

‘Well, I guess you’d have to _be_ people to really take my point—’

‘ _Bones._ ’ Jim turned on him, making his eyes as wide as they could possibly go—like his thoughts could just beam right out of his brain and into someone else’s if the space was big enough.

Spock opened his mouth, then hesitated, but there was nothing uncertain about it. If anything, the pause made it even more menacing. Jim had a feeling he’d done it on purpose. Shrewd bastard.

‘If you are implying that I should share sympathies with the Halkans for making no move to save their planet because of the Empire’s actions against Vulcan, allow me to reassure you: my loyalties have always been, and ever shall be, clear.’

Jim felt sick. He’d been taken apart, rearranged and brought somewhere he didn’t belong. Spock had a beard and Chekov had tried to kill him. _Another_ him, at some point, had murdered Captain Pike and taken the Enterprise for himself. But for some reason, this was what got him. The final straw. The warp core malfunction in the Klingon Space of his day.

The _Federation_ —no, the Empire—had taken out Vulcan. And Spock was… Still here. Had even been a part of it, maybe. That was just messed up. Sick.

Nothing was worth that; definitely not dilithium crystals.

Jim made a face. Couldn’t help it. _Dilithium_ was still as difficult to pronounce as ever and he’d still spent the better part of the last few hours nearly being taken out by boredom, which happened to have better aim than Chekov with a phaser. Quicker firing time, too.

‘Captain?’ Spock continued to read him with the same disapproval as he would a jammed scanner.

‘Just thinking about the Halkans. They, they sure do _love_ their dilithium, don’t they? I mean, way more than they should. More than _anybody_ should, if you ask me. Even us.’

‘They value it more than they value their lives,’ Spock said. ‘Or their planet; or their families and friends. They are foolish. Shall I give the order to fire?’

‘Just—’ Jim’s throat felt tight, the same way it did for any other allergic reaction—and he’d seen more than his fair share in the past year, much less an entire lifetime of itchy eyes and inopportune sneezing fits. Maybe he was allergic to this place, whatever was in the air that had made people so damn crazy they were offing each other every chance they got. As random and unfair as the final frontier Jim already knew could be, time and time again, this went above and beyond the pale. ‘Just, just hang onto that thought for me, would you, Mr. Spock?’ Spock’s eyebrow climbed higher. All different ways for Spock to imply _you’re out of your puny human mind_ without having to say a single word. In some regards, he really _was_ like Bones, at least in terms of assuming it was everybody else who were the crazy ones. But no matter what, Jim wasn’t aiming photon torpedoes on an innocent planet trying to defend a bunch of crystals, their livelihood, their entire way of being, from a power-hungry empire looking to wipe them off the face of the galaxy. ‘There’s...’ _Gotta be another way,_ Jim thought. And there was, the only problem being he didn’t know _what_ it was yet. ‘...a few things I have to take care of first.’

Spock’s eyebrow made no sign of descending. ‘Ah. Of course. The matter of Ensign Chekov.’

‘Right.’ Jim blinked. ‘That’s—always on the money, Mr. Spock. Exactly. The matter of Ensign Chekov. And I’ve got a few bargaining chips up my sleeve regarding the Halkans, too. But, please—let’s go with the Ensign Chekov matter first and, uh, foremost.’

There was something about Spock that always brought out the _uh_ in him. Every damn time.

Jim could feel Bones making laser eyes at the back of his neck and he straightened, then winced. The bruise in the small of his back was already making him stiff; as if he didn’t have enough to worry about without it.

‘Can I trust you to take care of things here, doctor?’ Jim added. He knew he shouldn’t have looked back, but he did anyway. The rules were made for breaking and Bones was Bones, no matter where they were, no matter who was trying to murder whom.

Bones lifted his hypo. ‘I think I’ve got things covered here in medical, Jim,’ Bones replied.

‘See that you do,’ Jim told him. Bones rolled his eyes when Jim saluted—probably thought Jim was getting too carried away with it—and then he disappeared behind the sliding doors as Jim stepped into the hall to join Spock for the Ensign Chekov matter.

Bones would lay low. Unless he thought somebody’s life was in danger.

Jim shook it off like water off a wetsuit.

‘The member of engineering responsible for the difficulties you experienced with beaming procedure earlier has also been dealt with, captain.’ Spock walked with his regular clipped precision, though his hands weren’t behind his back, Jim noticed. Almost like he had to be ready to unsheathe the blade strapped to his side or the phaser strapped to the other. As they passed unfamiliar groups along the way, each stopped to hail and salute, and Jim returned the gesture; after enough rounds of the whole shebang, he felt like an action figure designed to execute one move and one move only. ‘In the future, we will have Mr. Scott personally attend the task for your ground-to-ship transport.’

‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Spock.’ Jim cleared his throat. ‘Just don’t make me salute you, too. My elbow’s getting sore.’

‘Perhaps we should not have left the med bay,’ Spock said. His gaze lingered on Jim’s face before he crisply refocused it, and Jim straightened despite the pain in his back, trying to seem warlike, or violent, or evil—like the kind of guy who’d kill his commanding officer and mentor in order to slide into his captain’s chair. Mostly, he succeeded in feeling like a dumb punk who’d just been taken two falls out of three by a medical cot—although everybody knew it was that third fall you _didn’t_ take that counted and the other two, not so much.

‘Just tired from dealing with the Halkans all damn day,’ Jim said. ‘You know how diplomacy wears me out, Spock.’

‘Indeed,’ Spock said. It seemed that he did.

It was the little similarities that made the _big_ differences stick out like sore—or, in Jim’s experience, swollen—thumbs. Sure, Jim hated long negotiations in this reality as much as in his own. But they disagreed on how best to blow off steam.

He’d never been cranky enough to retaliate on a global scale; not even for dilithium crystals. And the crazy thing was that James Tiberius Kirk _wasn’t_ the anomaly in this place. Yeah, he’d apparently taken to murdering and pillaging like a duck to water, but most of it, as far as Jim could piece together, had been following orders. For the glory of the Terran Empire, or whatever.

That didn’t seem a little extreme to anyone? No. Because it was _procedure_.

And Jim knew how much Spock loved following procedure.

Pretending to be deep in thought while trailing his first officer wasn’t much of an act. Jim had a lot on his plate and therefore a lot on his mind. He could be forgiven, then, for the fact that he didn’t notice they were headed down an unfamiliar corridor. The Enterprise was big, but he’d made a point of studying her ins and outs.

‘This isn’t the way to the brig,’ Jim said. Considering everything else had been right where it was on _his_ ship—aside from everyone’s missing moral center—he figured it was a safe concern to raise.

‘No, captain.’ Spock rounded a corner, then halted, inclining his head in that way he had that made Jim think he was about to whip around and reveal poisonous fangs. Venomous fangs. Whichever one most applied to Vulcan physiology. Jim was _pretty_ sure that’d be venom. If he kept focusing on the similarities, the parts of this Spock he recognized over the parts he wasn’t sure if he would, then he wouldn’t have a chance to feel lost. If the mind-meld he’d undergone with another Spock was any indication, then their friendship ran deep. So deep, in fact, that it could overcome the disparities of alternate universes. It was a heavy thing to know—that there was somebody in his life who transcended everything else—and he would’ve been lying if he said he didn’t think about it, more often than he should. But, at least on these rare occasions, it was an anchor, a gravity he needed. ‘I assumed you had proscribed the usual punishment for a failed attempt on an officer’s life.’

‘Oh,’ Jim said. ‘Of course, Mr. Spock. Very, uh. Very astute.’

He cleared any following _uh_ s out of his throat, taking in the security detail posted outside the door. It was just a couple guys, but they were sweating—like even the relief of being in the hall didn’t take away their fear of whatever was happening behind those doors.

Great. Given what he’d seen so far, Jim had a feeling Chekov wasn’t getting a stern talking to from the security chief and a time out for bad behavior.

Spock accepted this. Or, if he’d noticed anything was up, he wasn’t letting on. There was always a certain levelof skepticism that filtered into Spock’s appraisal of Jim on a daily basis. It didn’t mean anything serious. He was probably just wondering what Jim’s tiny human brain needed with a head that size, and so on; the usual Spock stuff. He nodded to security, then opened the door for Jim.

Just beyond the security detail, Chekov had been trapped inside some kind of glass booth, where his entire body was wracked with tension—it was obvious he was screaming, even if no sound filtered from the booth into the room.

‘The captain is here to officiate punishment for Ensign Chekov.’ Spock turned to Jim before he was ready for it and Jim quickly tore his eyes away from Chekov, throwing out a brusque salute to the man at the controls for good measure. ‘Maximum force as usual, captain?’

‘No,’ Jim blurted. This was what he got for trying to delay one tough call with another. And it wasn’t his ass on the line, not this time. ‘I mean—he’s a good officer, right? Practically a prodigy… It’d be a waste. Of a good resource. Maximum force, that is.’

Spock’s eyebrows did two of the Spock’s-eyebrows-things at once, one of them lifting, both of them getting pinchy in the center.

‘You catch more flies with honey,’ Jim added, making it sound as authoritative as possible, and not like an echo of Bones at his most grumpily poetic. ‘’Cause Ensign Chekov’s a bug, and all. Not worth the waste of ship’s energy. ...Is what I’m saying. ...Captain’s orders.’

Spock’s expression didn’t change—but Jim hadn’t expected it to. Instead, he lifted his hand and the flashing lights that appeared to be taking a damn good officer apart piece by wretched piece flickered off. ‘The Agony Booth was prepared for the full duration, captain.’ Spock’s face was impassive, barely tinged with a hint of green flush, in the steady light. He implied his question without actually asking it. Another Vulcan mind trick and, on good days, it made Jim feel like _he_ was a mind-reader. Sort of.

‘The _Agony Booth?_ ’ Jim could’ve kicked himself—would have, too, if the boots he was wearing didn’t have such hard soles. ‘The _Agony_ Booth. Come on, Spock, we’ve got Halkans to deal with. Dilithium crystals. Just station someone on Ensign Chekov and have them read him the unabridged Star—Terran Empire rulebook for the next twenty-four hours. Effective torture technique _and_ a way to conserve resources.’

Spock’s expression did change—and Jim _had_ expected it to this time, right down to the timing, making the shift from mildly unimpressed to _Did Doctor McCoy check to be completely certain that nothing inside your skull is currently leaking important fluids_? Jim recognized that expression; some days, all he had to go by was the north star it provided in unfamiliar skies.

If Spock was wondering about brain damage, then chances were, Jim was doing something right. At least he was doing _something_ —and that something couldn’t be torturing Pavel Chekov.

Even though the guy had tried to kill him.

Jim wiped the sweat off the back of his neck. ‘Ion storm side-effect,’ he said. ‘Gives a guy a weird sense of humor. That’s the doctor’s official diagnosis. You can ask him if you want, but you know how he hates to be interrupted.’

‘Very well.’ Spock signaled the Agony Booth underlings, whoever they were. ‘You heard the captain’s orders. I assume we will attend the bridge and announce the plans for the attack on Halkan?’ Jim’s own eyebrow shot up. For a moment, he wondered if he and Spock were about to share one of their little jokes that signified camaraderie, or at least a jointly warped sense of inappropriate humor. One of the few things they had in common, but it helped when air pressure was low and oxygen was running out. ‘As you can imagine, Security Chief Sulu has been anticipating testing out the new photon weaponry for quite some time.’

‘Dangerous man, Security Chief Sulu,’ Jim said. Testing the waters. Never a bad idea. The Agony Booth was making him sweat in uncomfortable places; no wonder his uniform had done away with sleeves.

‘One of the most,’ Spock agreed. As he stepped out of the officially sanctioned torture room and into the hall, he drew Jim aside. Close. Jim could see that he was wearing—wait, was that _eyeshadow?_ Had he grabbed the wrong tube off of Uhura’s nightstand that morning, or was that another Vulcan detail in this unfamiliar place, and _finally_ something that might’ve been considered an improvement, at that? ‘Security Officer Sulu has much to prove. Any hesitation on your part regarding the Halkan homeworld—any failure to provide the Empire with its precious dilithium crystals—will be just the opportunity he has been waiting for.’

‘Right,’ Jim said. ‘Wait, what?’

Spock’s eyebrows had grown tired of doing all the Spock’s-eyebrows-things, muscles used up on the rest of the day’s difficulties. Or—and Jim privately hoped this was closer to the truth—Spock was just as drained by the atmosphere of the Agony Booth as Jim was, and this was his only way of showing it: by not giving Jim the hairy eyeball as often as he would’ve otherwise.

‘Should you hesitate to take control of the situation,’ Spock clarified, ‘I must inform you that there has been chatter on the comm regarding Security Chief Sulu’s direct orders from the Empire itself to do whatever is necessary, captain.’

‘Why, Mr. Spock,’ Jim said, because he couldn’t help himself, ‘is that... Is that _loyalty_ I’m hearing? You’re not trying to tell me you _care_ , are you?’

God, he was an asshole. But that was a true north he could steer by, too.

Spock, as predicted, bristled like Jim had reached up and tugged on his Vulcan pigtails. Could Vulcans have pigtails? Jim didn’t know—and he couldn’t ask—but the ensuing mental image was gonna haunt him for _years_.

‘Come with me.’ Just like that, Spock was gone and moving down the hall. No more close confidence, no more eyeshadow, just a whole lot of thigh-high boots and pointy ears.

Maybe he was leading Jim to a convenient airlock where he could blow him out without suspicion. Given the day he’d had so far, it wouldn’t have come as a huge shock.

Instead, Spock got into the turbolift. He even lifted his head, making it clear he was waiting for Jim—waiting in tight quarters with no witnesses and no visible exits.

Bones had this saying about _better the devil you know than the devil you don’t._ It didn’t apply here because everyone outside of Bones was someone Jim didn’t know. But Jim had to go with his gut. Maybe it was stupid, but Jim felt like his odds were better in the turbolift with Spock than they were with anyone else on the flying menace that was supposed to be his Enterprise.

At least _Spock_ hadn’t tried to kill him yet.

Jim took his place in the turbolift, not quite shoulder-to-shoulder with Spock and his beard. He pushed the button for the bridge and they began to rise.

‘I did not wish to speak candidly in front of potential witnesses, captain.’ Spock spoke straight to the wall ahead of him. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the _captain_ at the end, Jim wouldn’t have been sureit was meant for him. ‘As I am certain you are already aware, there are many beyond Ensign Chekov who would be eager to take advantage of your situation for themselves.’

‘My situation?’ Jim couldn’t shut up, not even for a second. If he did, he’d think too hard about what was happening around him and lose it. No wonder Bones was always filling up the silence with sound. Something about nature abhorring a vacuum. ‘Come on, Spock. You’re making me sound downright _terminal_.’

 ‘I have been contacted privately by the Empire as well.’ From the look on his face, Spock didn’t appreciate the joke—although with him it was always debatable whether or not he even knew that Jim had made one. ‘They have informed me that, should you allow the situation with the Halkans to escalate beyond the point of recovery, then I am to assume your command. By the usual means.’

‘By the usual means.’ Jim felt like an admiral’s talking parrot. An admiral’s talking parrot that was having a very bad day. ‘So I take it you’re not just gonna ask me nicely.’

Spock let the silence gather a beat too long before he picked the conversation back up. Not exactly the stuff reassuring dreams were made of.

‘I have no desire to take command of the Enterprise,’ he said, right when Jim was about to abandon all hope. He turned a long, sidelong look onto the space between them, resting at last on Jim himself. ‘Nor do I have any desire to count you among my enemies.’

That wasn’t an answer, Jim realized. Or, if it was, it wasn’t the one that said _no captain, I will not kill you, because that would be illogical._

Even Spock was out to get him. Either the turbolift was going too fast or Jim was getting dizzy. He was probably allergic to the crew, or at least allergic to being hated. As far as he knew, Bones didn’t have a hypo for an antidote to _that_ little problem.

‘Don’t worry, Spock.’ Jim straightened his shoulders like he had every intention of following his own advice. His lower back throbbed in protest. ‘I’m still sore from the last time we tangled. I’ve got bruises _on_ my bruises. Probably for life.’

‘Captain?’ Spock said.

It was a misstep. Jim realized it the second after he’d touched down. Maybe the _other_ Jim Kirk had never emotionally compromised his way back into the captain’s chair. Maybe Spock hadn’t been upset to begin with, since he’d been part of the instrument of Vulcan’s destruction.

The turbolift doors slid open with a _whoosh_. Nobody chirped _keptin on ze bridge_.

Because Chekov was hanging out in the Agony Booth. And Jim _really_ had to stop repeating the phrase like he thought holding onto it could make it smaller. It didn’t; it wouldn’t. It was still the Agony Booth.

Damn it.

Fortunately, there were plenty of distractions on the bridge. For example, Sulu had a red, crescent-moon scar on the right side of his face and Uhura’s uniform was a _lot_ smaller than Jim remembered, barely big enough to warrant the three nasty-looking knives strapped to her sides. She was filing her nails down with a fourth while Sulu leered in her direction, one hand resting dangerously close to a giant red button that probably meant _fire the torpedoes, eliminate innocents, kill all Halkan kittens, laugh about it later_.

It took the crew a moment—not being announced had its drawbacks—but when they realized their captain had arrived, they all executed the hail-and-salute, standing at attention like clockwork. Some of them kept their free hands on their weapons, though, and when Jim finger-phasered in Sulu’s direction, Sulu nearly unsheathed what looked like a fencing epee from his fancy Empire sash before Jim laughed to dispel the murderous tension.

The rest of the crew laughed too, but it wasn’t happy laughter. It was I-hate-your-guts laughter. The laughter that came right before a massive meathead who’d wind up with a nickname like _Cupcake_ pounded the splintered shards of bone that used to be your nose straight into your brain.

‘Status report, Mr. Sulu,’ Jim said.

The laughter stopped. But then again, so had his.

‘All systems nominal, captain.’ Sulu returned to his seat. The light from the dashboard lit up his face like a Halloween pumpkin’s smile. ‘We are ready to fire on your orders, captain.’

That, Jim thought, was an ominous pause if ever he’d heard one. And he’d heard plenty, most of them during his time in the Academy, whenever a teacher looked up from the podium, about to say his name. Or the handful of times he’d been called up before his superiors to explain how it was he’d managed to beat a test nobody else could.

If he’d been able to cheat his way around it so it couldn’t be proved without a hearing, then that was an A plus in Jim’s book. Something told him the talent would’ve taken him a lot farther in this universe than the one he was used to.

Not a price he was willing to pay.

‘On your orders, captain,’ Sulu repeated.

‘Yeah, Mr. Sulu, that’s fantastic. And I heard you the first time, thanks.’ Jim’s grin had ossified into something he didn’t want to catch the reflection of in any of the bridge’s shiny surfaces. ‘Uhura—have you established contact with the Halkans?’

Uhura arched a brow. ‘You always _do_ have flair, captain. Yes; they’re on the line.’

‘Patch ‘em through,’ Jim said, and turned to face the screen.

Less than a second passed before a Halkan appeared—sweaty and distressed, but then, there was a starship with photon torpedoes locked on him, and Jim couldn’t blame the poor bastard for not having his best poker face on. ‘I’m giving you one last chance to end this peacefully,’ Jim said.

‘Captain Kirk, we will not be bullied by your Empire. We have made our positions clear on this matter, and now...’ The Halkan swallowed. He looked like he was allergic to the tactics of tyranny—and again, Jim didn’t blame him. ‘...and now,’ the Halkan concluded, ‘we will make our stand.’

There was fear in his eyes. Jim knew it, read it, could practically feel it, despite the distance from the bridge to the planet’s surface. It was a brave thing the Halkan was doing—and the least Jim could do for him was buy him more time.

‘Twenty-four hours,’ Jim said.

The Halkan blinked. ‘Captain Kirk—’

‘You have twenty-four hours to reconsider, starting...’ Sulu wasn’t the only one who could use dramatic pauses to maximum effect. ‘... _now_. Reconvene your council. Make the smart decision. Don’t gamble your lives away on a bunch of crystals. Kirk out.’

The transmission ended. Jim could hear the collective intake of breath, followed by Sulu’s hardened voice. ‘ _Captain_ ,’ he said.

‘Something you wanna say to me, Mr. Sulu?’ Jim turned to find Sulu fingering the length of his scar and Jim almost wished he had a beard of his own, or a mustache he could twirl. It’d complete the whole picture, the look he was going for. ‘Might as well spit it out.’

‘Of course not, captain.’ Sulu was lying through his teeth and anybody with ears could hear him grinding his molars. ‘I defer, of course, to your good judgment.’

Something about him playing along felt worse than if he’d up and called Jim an idiot to his face. This crew didn’t seem big on manners, or on shielding their captain’s sensitive feelings. If Sulu wasn’t willing to air his thoughts on the bridge, that was probably _only_ because he’d thought of another place to air them. Somewhere quiet, dark, and without any witnessing crewmen around.

Well, the joke was on him. There wasn’t room for _two_ guys in the Agony Booth, but Jim was willing to make a swap. Maybe he could short out the synaptic scan and use it as a temporary brig. But he’d already drawn a lot of attention for his tactics in the Halkan deal; Jim wasn’t clear on how much more he could push before the ruse came crashing down around him.

If this was how much everyone respected him when they thought he was _their_ captain, Jim didn’t have much faith in his authority once they found out the truth that he _wasn’t_. It’d probably be him in the Agony Booth, or worse. On the other end of Sulu’s fencing foil, with Spock’s dagger at his throat and Uhura using her nail file on him, not to file his nails.

‘All right then.’ Jim slapped his hands together, rubbing them to work the sudden sting from his palms. ‘So long as there are no _objections,_ I’m heading back to med bay to get the results of a few of the more painful and invasive tests Bones can do for a person who’s passed through some ion radiation. Pray for me, guys.’

‘Captain?’ Uhura was rocking that ponytail today. The missing two-thirds of her uniform revealed she had better abs than Jim. He’d always _suspected,_ but he’d never been able to arrange the necessary dress code violations to prove it.

She sauntered up to him, her fourth knife swaying back and forth between her fingers. It was almost hypnotic. Jim tried not to think too hard about all the soft places she could stick him in.

‘What is it, lieutenant?’

She cast her eyes down. _Please, god, not anything below the waist,_ Jim thought. Then, she put her hand on his chest and leaned up, putting her mouth next to his ear.

‘I’ll be by your quarters later for a few invasive tests of my own.’

Jim’s balls retracted into his body at warp speed. They were gone, a lost cause, his very own no-win scenario. _Koballyashi Maru_. It would’ve been hilarious, only they were never coming back.

‘Ah…ha,’ Jim said. It wasn’t words so much as an expulsion of air, stepping back without getting his hands on Uhura to encourage her to do the same. He’d lost sight of Spock behind him but he was expecting the sharp pinch in his shoulder any second now.

He’d honestly welcome the blackout that followed if it meant he didn’t have to be a part of this conversation anymore.

Uhura’s brow wrinkled. _That_ was closer to the look she usually gave him: like he’d wandered up to her braying like a donkey and sure, she could speak eighteen thousand languages with capable fluency, but _barn animal_ wasn’t one of them.

‘Don’t tell me you’re going to let Sulu win. The game’s _always_ more fun with a little healthy competition.’

Her hand slid down, _down_ , over Jim’s non-abs to his waist and _hello._ New reports indicated a sighting of the _Koballyashi Maru_ off the starboard side.

‘ _Believe_ me.’ Jim grabbed Uhura’s wrist and winked, putting some space between them. Between him and that knife. Where was Spock’s Vulcan nerve pinch when you needed it? ‘I’m not looking to let Mr. Sulu win anything. Maybe we can continue this conversation later. Off the bridge.’

‘Of _course_ , captain.’ Uhura had never lost her composure, so there was nothing to regain. Her knife went into a fourth holster, hidden under her left arm.

‘Back to your post, lieutenant,’ Jim said.

He let her go and turned on his heel, heading straight for the turbolift in a way that he hoped looked more commanding and less like he was running away from his own crew. Maybe it was his imagination, but he could’ve sworn there was a pair of Vulcan eyes boring into the back of his neck as he left.

*


	2. Chapter 2

On the way to the infirmary, Jim kept himself occupied with various small logic puzzles, such as: _How Do You Solve a Problem Like Security Chief Sulu?_ And _How Jealous Are Vulcans Really When You Hit On Their Girlfriends By Accident?_

Also _Will Spock Laugh At The Koballyashi Maru Joke In This Or Any Universe?_

Probably not. No, scratch that—definitely not.

Infinite universes, and there was no chance of Spock laughing at Jim’s clever wordplay in any of ‘em.

But the point was, Jim was busy enough with his thoughts that he almost walked straight into a private conversation—hanging back at the last second before his shadow fell past a rounded corner because of laughter that sounded like Sulu’s in an echo chamber. Mean, twisted. Spine-chilling. Almost over-the-top funny, except for the part where innocent, sewenteen-year-old Pavel Chekov had almost offed Jim _and_ Bones in medical, so the stakes were all too clear, not to mention all too high.

Jim pressed himself flat against the wall and bit back on a wince when the action bumped the bruise at the base of his spine, which was turning into more of a lump, or an egg, or a second ass. What Jim wouldn’t have given for one of Bones’s hypos now—but in a way, the pain grounded him. Kept him sweaty and alive.

‘Their _great_ alliance was always bound to be their greatest weakness,’ Sulu was saying, to a group of what appeared to be rapt toadies, and—was that Cupcake? Jim had gone through a lot to get the guy on his side after the first time they met—not exactly love at first sight. Or love at first fight. _Damn_ , but Jim was on a roll. ‘Commander Spock appears to value that alliance over the approval of the Empire. I intercepted the earlier message from base instructing him to move against the captain if he delayed in his dealings with the Halkans. But he who hesitates is lost.’

Cupcake—damn him—chuckled, then cut off quickly with a hiccup. Jim could just picture the scene, Sulu drawing his _ridiculous_ fencing sword for dramatic effect. Always was the kind of guy who added his own flair to the situation.

‘You’ll take the half-breed,’ Sulu continued. ‘Seven of you _should_ be enough to manage only _part_ of a Vulcan, shouldn’t you? And I’ll take care of the captain. Then it looks like the two of them took each other out, and we have the Enterprise, the Empire’s prized dilithium crystals, and no Halkans _or_ bleeding hearts to stand in our way.’

Jim had heard enough. It felt wrong, a violation of the Sulu he knew, to keep listening.

Also, Jim knew he couldn’t go down to medical and bring a sword-crazy security chief down on Bones with him. That was fine, because he had places to be, half-Vulcans to warn. He had to get to Spock before the Cupcake assassination party did.

Jim turned his bruised back on the mutiny plan and, with enough distance between him and the would-be assassins, broke into a trot, hoping like hell that Spock’s quarters here were the same as Spock’s quarters back home.

They were. Jim pounded on the door, back aching. He might’ve muttered a couple of _c’mon, Spock, put the weird Vulcan rock-guitar lute down and answer the door_ -type sentiments in there before Spock appeared, brow impeccably raised.

‘Captain—’ Spock began.

Jim was starting to miss the sound of his own name. That was the medicine Bones could’ve provided for him, better than anything in a hypo. Jim just had to hope that Sulu wasn’t going to try and skewer him, but Spock was...

Spock was priority. Jim winced again as he thought it and Spock’s eyebrows lowered.

‘Hey there, Mr. Spock,’ Jim said. ‘You think the two of us can take seven really _big_ officers without losing any of our favorite body parts in the process?’

For some reason—even though he wasn’t the Spock Jim knew—beard-Spock seemed to understand exactly what Jim was saying.

Or maybe that was because Cupcake and his guys had already arrived, phasers out. Something told Jim they wouldn’t be set to stun.

‘Down!’ Jim moved before thinking; that was how he _did_. His hands were on Spock’s chest before he knew what he was doing, pushing him back and out of the way of the open phaser fire. He barely got the door shut in time—and he knew it wouldn’t hold for longer than a couple of seconds, maximum.

‘There is no exit from this room save the door you have just closed.’ Spock shifted under Jim where they’d landed together, hands on his shoulders to push him aside. The touch felt hot on Jim’s bare skin, like he was running a Vulcan fever. ‘And if the numbers are as you say, I calculate that our odds of survival are—’

‘I don’t wanna hear it, Spock.’ Jim got to his feet, taking stock of his weapons. A phaser that was locked to kill and a knife he was gonna have to get in real close to use. Not bad, but not _great._ ‘Everybody’s a damn critic.’

Something within the door mechanism popped, then made a sizzling sound. Yeah, that wasn’t gonna hold. You couldn’t keep a good security chief out, or so the saying went. And if that wasn’t a saying, Jim had it copyrighted.

At least he’d die with a legacy.

Spock was looking at him. It wasn’t his usual surface confusion, a momentary curiosity about how Jim’s mind worked or the source of all the emotional upheaval he displayed on a regular basis. _This_ one was like he was looking to put Bones out of business by inventing ocular scanning. He stared right past Jim and straight into his head.

Not a mind-meld, but it felt damn close.

‘Had you aligned yourself with Security Chief Sulu in an effort to get ahead of my orders, you would not be wasting your time with the pantomime of being concerned for my well-being,’ Spock said.

It was more of an appraisal of events than a question. But Spock still looked like he was waiting for Jim to answer.

‘No shit,’ Jim said.

He meant to elaborate. He really did. There was an explanation in there somewhere. Jim had a natural predisposition to Spocks these days, which was ironic considering how poorly he’d started off with his own. But the old guy had changed all that. Opened Jim’s eyes—opened his _brain_ and set up camp there. So if Jim was a little soft on the idea of another Spock, even one who fit right in with the rest of his ship of horrors, well—at least he knew who to blame.

_Spock_. Rule of the universe. It was always Spock’s fault—unless it was Jim’s.

But there wasn’t time for a speech or even speaking. This universe _so_ wasn’t into letting Jim have the big hero moment. He heard the door groan open, caught a glimpse of Sulu’s phaser and Cupcake’s big fist, right before it slammed into the back of his head.

As he blacked out, he wondered what happened when a captain died in a universe that wasn’t his own.

Maybe _that_ was why, in all his travels, he’d never met another James Tiberius Kirk.

*

There were no crazy dreams, no voices in his head, in the dark time between Jim’s unconsciousness and when he awoke. He was out cold and then he was up, simple as that.

Jim had died before. This wasn’t it.

The first thing that hit him was the cold. Just when he was starting to think the Terran Empire captain’s uniform couldn’t get any _more_ useless, he’d been proven wrong. _Again._ His arms were gonna ice up and fall off at this rate. Jim rubbed his palms together, breathing into his cupped hands before bringing them over his shoulders and down his frozen biceps.

Wherever he was, it was outside the Enterprise’s temperature controls, which meant that he was no longer on his ship.

So that roaring in his ears? That was probably the wind.

He was slow to sit up, not bothering to muffle his groan as all his stiff muscles rose in unison to bitch about the sudden movement. There were craggy shapes around him, flickering light reflected off the rock walls. This was all adding up to an uncomfortably familiarequation.

Marooned on a barren planetoid, howling wind raging around him, extremities already ice cold—and this time, he didn’t even have the suit he needed to keep frostbite from being the big bad that finally did him in. What the Romulans hadn’t done; what the Klingons hadn’t managed; what even Khan, radiation, Jim’s own reckless sacrifice wasn’t enough to succeed in...

The elements would.

Fitting, really.

There was only one thing Jim could do now—and it wasn’t pretty.

‘Bones?’ Jim’s voice echoed from crag to crag until it was finally swallowed up by the darkness on all four sides. He could hear—for a single moment—how small he sounded, how much less than the wind he was, but that was obviously nothing more than a side-effect of the dizziness he was experiencing, the throbbing in his head. He knew how loud he could be. And if how hard he’d been hit was any indication, he knew how hard he could hit back.

_You should see the other guys._

_That was a good fight._

But Bones didn’t answer; the echo of his name didn’t count. There were no hypos; there were no full body scans. Hell, Jim would’ve been happy to turn to his left to find the scanner shoved into his face, distracting him with constant perimeter interference, because that’d mean there was a doctor in the house. Or cave. Or grave. Or wherever Jim was.

There wasn’t.

There was, however, a Spock. Beard first, thrown into sharp relief above a sudden flare. Then, light burst into view, making Jim twist around too quickly for his compromised systems, just so he could keep his eyes from melting out of their sockets at the change. His head ached. The pain in his back was about as bad as Jim could expect from tangling with a lean, mean med-bay table. Of course, Cupcake still packed a hell of a punch—but at least this wasn’t death. This wasn’t what being dead looked like, if only because it looked like something.

Once the blinding light faded from Jim’s eyes, anyway.

Spock was frowning. Jim could tell. His eyebrow hadn’t raised and his lips weren’t turned down at the corners but there was a Spock frown, explicit and unmistakable, and it happened all in the center of the forehead, right above the bridge of his nose; this was it. No question.

Jim puffed into his cupped palms again. The knuckles of his left hand were stiff, almost like—no, _exactly_ like—somebody with size fourteen feet and steel-tipped boots had stepped on his fingers while kicking a phaser out of his hand. On purpose.

Cupcake. _Again_. Eventually, Jim was going to be turned against the dessert because of the guy, and that’d be the _real_ tragedy.

‘Hey, Spock,’ Jim said. He cleared his throat, tried something new. ‘You’re not Bones.’

‘A fact for which I am routinely grateful.’ Spock was definitely frowning. Jim didn’t know why, although he wouldn’t be stretching too far assuming it had _something_ to do with being marooned on a sub-zero planet with a guy who was shouting somebody else’s name. There was being rude and then there was being hurtful.

Jim tried to grin. His mouth felt swollen.

‘Uh.’ He swallowed. He had to stop letting his uh’s and his Spocks get the better of him. ‘Status report, Mr. Spock.’

‘To begin with, I am no longer your first officer,’ Spock replied, ‘as you are no longer my captain. We have been stranded on a planetoid near the Halkan homeworld due to my manipulation of Security Chief Sulu’s taste for theatrics.’

Jim blinked, trying to keep his eyes focused. ‘Which means?’

‘I allowed him to believe he had himself thought of the poetic justice in forcing the two of us watch him crush the Halkans from afar, then die together of starvation or the cold soon after.’

‘Cool,’ Jim said. ‘Great. That’s some quick thinking there, Spock. I can’t wait for that to happen to us.’

‘It will not happen to us,’ Spock replied. He sounded sure; Jim could trust that a Vulcan never lied, even when you wanted them to. ‘You saved my life.’

‘C’mon. Like it was the first time.’

Spock frowned again. Deeper. ‘No,’ he confirmed at last, just as Jim was beginning to think he’d messed up his lines. ‘No, it was not. Yet in this instance you risked your rank and power in order to safeguard my well-being. So I must ask you this—who are you, and why are you here?’

Jim didn’t get the first question all that often. The latter happened constantly, usually right before he got a dorm door slammed in his face or someone peeled him off the bar after last call. But Jim’s _name_ got around and people knew who he was. Sometimes that worked to his advantage, and sometimes it was a huge pain in the ass. Either way, the Kirk name traveled. Jim was used to explaining _himself_ , but not his identity. That went without saying.

Spock was only asking— _could_ only be asking—for one specific reason now.

It wasn’t such a shock. After all, it hadn’t taken Jim that long to work things out, and Spock was a details man, even more than him. All those long, calculating looks had finally added up to something. Jim couldn’t blame him. At least neither of them had tried to kill the other.

‘I’m Jim.’ It didn’t have much weight to it, but then it wasn’t much of a confession. ‘The way you talk I assume you thought my first name was _captain,_ but...no.’

‘You are not the James Tiberius Kirk under whom I have served.’ There was no phaser in Spock’s hand, and yet somehow his tone managed to convey that very threat. Jim wasn’t looking to wind up on the wrong end of more ruthless Vulcan martial arts anytime soon.

Jim couldn’t believe he was thinking this, but for once, the truth seemed like the safest bet. Even _he_ didn’t recognize himself anymore.

‘You’re right.’ He held his hands up in casual surrender. The act was more symbolic than anything else. Even if Spock beat him up now, he couldn’t do much _worse_ than what had already been done to them both. ‘I’ve never met the guy, but I can sure as hell tell you: I’m not him.’

‘Explain.’

‘Don’t I wish I could, Mr. Spock.’ Jim leaned back against the stone wall, one foot tucked up to help his sore back brace his weight. ‘I could _try._ Seems we’ve got a surplus of time and not much else at our disposal.’ Until the thing with the Halkans happened. And then, of course, the freezing and the death. ‘But all I know is that I don’t belong here. Where I come from, we’re _explorers_ , not despots.’ He tugged at the patch on his uniform, the same sword plunged through the same planet. ‘Starfleet operates under the Federation. _United_ Federation of Planets. Not the whatever this is. Empire, right? I think our wires got crossed in the transporter. Ion storm. I’ve seen weirder. So I ended up here, and…’

‘And _my_ captain is currently aboard _your_ vessel.’ Even unfamiliar, Spock knew how to finish Jim’s sentences. It was uncomfortable, to say the least.

‘Sounds like a real piece of work, that guy,’ Jim said. It felt weird, knocking himself like that. Disloyal somehow. But the facts were the facts. He _was_ kind of a prick here. ‘You should be relieved.’

Spock gave him a dark look. It sure as hell wasn’t ‘relieved’. But it didn’t seem ‘pissed’, either. It was quieter than that, shrewd and contemplative.

‘Well, I mean, a guy that won’t stick his neck out for his crew…’ Jim tested his advantage. ‘He doesn’t sound like a great captain to me.’

‘Captain Kirk is one of the finest in the galaxy,’ Spock said. It sounded rote, even by Vulcan standards.

‘But he wouldn’t save your life if it meant losing his command,’ Jim replied.

Now _that_ was a parallel he could’ve lived without. The memory had some distance now, but it was wrapped up with Pike. That still stung.

‘No.’

‘His loss.’ Jim shrugged, then winced as the movement brought back his rough handling under Security Chief Sulu’s seven-man detail.

‘Are you in need of medical attention?’ Spock’s interest shifted so suddenly that it left Jim scrambling for the right answer. Under the circumstances, there wasn’t much either of them could do.

‘It’s fine,’ Jim said.

‘You inquired after Doctor McCoy,’ Spock reminded him. ‘The two of you beamed back from Halkan together.’

‘Shit.’ It wasn’t poetry, but it was how Jim felt, what the situation _was_ , something he’d been knee deep in since he’d said _beam us up, Scotty_ on his communicator during the ion storm. ‘ _Bones_.’

‘Then he was with you,’ Spock confirmed. ‘From your parallel.’

‘Is.’ Jim shifted again, knowing all too well that the exercise was futile. There’d be no getting comfortable, not like this. He was already losing feeling in his feet; maybe soon he’d lose feeling in the places that could use a good numbing, like the lump on his head and the one on his back. ‘ _Is_ with me.’

Spock’s lips tightened. ‘Perhaps. Doctor McCoy has always been too much of a bleeding heart.’

‘Coming from you,’ Jim said, ‘he’d _probably_ consider that a compliment.’

‘A statement of fact; nothing more.’ If it hadn’t been for the beard, Jim could’ve closed his eyes and imagined this was the Spock he knew, not the Spock he was going to get to know before one of them went crazy and ate the other, then wore his skin for warmth. ‘Nevertheless, the Enterprise will always have need of a skilled doctor. If he is able to keep his head down, he will likewise be able to keep his position.’

‘And keep his head,’ Jim added. _Ha ha_. ‘That was a—yeah. Never mind. The Spock I know back home doesn’t have much of a sense of humor, either.’ He closed his eyes, watching little white lights burst over the darkness of his eyelids for a while like fireworks. Then, he pinched the inside of his ice-cold arm, snapping himself out of it. ‘Man, but Sulu here’s a little _bitch_. What got him this way? Don’t tell me—I always knew that external dampeners thing you pulled on him back in the day would come back to bite you in the ass.’

When Jim cracked one eye open, Spock was still watching him, still not displaying any sense of fine, Vulcan humor. That was easy for him; _his_ uniform had sleeves. Jim knew his extremities would be turning blue any second now and the chances of _another_ Spock showing up for rescue detail were lower than ever. He knew that he could trust _his_ Spock—weird thinking about him like that, but distinctions were necessary at the moment—to figure out there was a murderous warlord in Jim’s place and deal with that problem while Jim was gone, and if _this_ Spock was right—Spocks were always right, except for when they were being jerks—then Bones was going to be okay, too.

Just not forever. Jim had to get back to him.

Somehow.

‘Sulu didn’t leave us any phasers down here, did he?’ Jim asked. Spock’s silence was confirmation. ‘No; of _course_ he didn’t. No poetic justice in that.’

‘He saw his chance,’ Spock replied. ‘He was enterprising to take it without hesitation. He lacks your finesse and your head for strategy, but there is something to be said for the wisdom of ruthlessness.’

‘And what about you?’ That was the thing that’d been nagging at the back of JIm’s mind this whole time—like something stuck between his molars, only he was operating at half-speed because of the cold, his breaths puffing like fluffy white clouds in front of his frosty lips. ‘You had _your_ chance to take over before Security Chief Screw-you did, but you didn’t. So why _is_ that, Mr. Spock?’

The problem with always being so logical, Jim had discovered, was that when you weren’t, it stood out starkly against the status quo.

Like a Federation captain on an Empire’s bridge.

If Spock didn’t reply with a logical answer, then chances were, he didn’t have one.

That was nice. Almost cozy. Maybe Jim could allow the pain in his head to shut up for a while, catch some extra Z’s, not have to worry about Spock killing him to use as a snowsuit while he was unconscious. The idea itself was ridiculous—but not as ridiculous as some of the other stuff that was happening.

‘Never mind,’ Jim said. ‘You always ask me the hard questions and I think to myself, _damn it_ , Spock, why not give me a pass once in a while? Might as well do the whole lead-by-example thing and see where it gets me. Off this ice-rock in the middle of nowhere? Okay, maybe not, but it’s _always_ worth a shot in the dark. Too bad you’re a science officer, Spock, and not a doctor.’

Jim laughed. Spock didn’t.

‘Nonetheless,’ Spock said, when Jim’s chuckle turned ragged, then turned to wind and silence, ‘I have some knowledge of human anatomy.’

‘Bones’ll get jealous,’ Jim said.

‘The overabundance of feelings that may or may not be plaguing Doctor McCoy are no concern of mine,’ Spock replied.

Fair enough. Apparently, at this exact moment, it was _Jim_ who concerned him most—and he was a Jim this Spock didn’t even know. Jim couldn’t tell if that made it weirder or more sensible. Maybe here, in the alternate reality, that saying went the other way. _Better the Jim you don’t know than the Jim you do._ Or something.

Or maybe Cupcake had knocked him harder than he thought.

Jim flexed his fingers, burrowing his fist into the crook of his elbow. There was no warmth to be stolen from the skin there. Whatever Spock was offering, it had to be better than freezing to death. Jim had no way of knowing if there was a Khan in this universe, let alone one whose blood he could repurpose to make a second stunning recovery. People didn’t just bounce back from death. Not more than once, anyway.

And—this was more immediately important—he had to get back to Bones. Jim was counting on him, right now, to be able to keep out of trouble and do good work long enough for them to be able to work out an escape, which meant he had to believe the opposite was true too. That Bones was counting on _Jim_ to turn his marooned station into something he could work with.

Jim couldn’t honestly say who had the tougher job. Although he had some idea of whose job was currently more uncomfortable.

‘I’m fine,’ Jim said.

The lie came out easy. It didn’t seem to matter much one way or the other. Whether he was fine or whether he wasn’t, it wasn’t going to change the weather.

‘Captain,’ Spock said, then frowned, that line between his brows deepening. ‘No. You are not the captain. …James?’

It was Jim’s turn to frown. His lip curled like he’d taken a swig of Bones’ drink instead of his own. That guy was gonna melt the lining off his stomach one of these days and then _he’d_ be the one who could fix it. ‘James? _Jesus_ , no. Anything but that. You make it sound like you’re about to put me on academic probation.’ Jim stepped back when Spock stepped closer. ‘It’s just—Jim’s fine.’

‘Jim, then,’ Spock echoed. It didn’t sound any friendlier in his mouth than _James_. Or captain, for that matter. ‘If you persist in ignoring your current condition, it will only worsen with time. The cold is numbing your injuries, but it is also too much for a human system to bear for a prolonged period without the appropriate insulation.’

‘Tell me something I _don’t_ know, Spock.’ Jim bounced on the soles of his feet, pumping the blood through his veins. It was better than nothing.

‘Vulcan circulation and heart rate is faster than that of a human’s.’ Apparently Spock had decided to take the dare literally. ‘Our collective normothermia is somewhere in the range of thirty-two-point-seven-eight degrees.’

Jim thought it through. ‘So you’re…colder than I am?’

That didn’t seem possible.

‘I am affected by the change in temperature,’ Spock said. ‘To pretend otherwise would be wasting both our time—a resource which has recently become immeasurably more precious.’

‘Right,’ Jim said. ‘So—we have to get warm.’ Somehow, the notion was easier to swallow when it wasn’t _his_ delicate human ass on the line for a change. ‘Guess we won’t be making hot rocks with our phasers.’

‘A highly illogical use of the limited power cells,’ Spock agreed. At least, it _seemed_ like an agreement. ‘If we _had_ phasers, it would be necessary to conserve their power to deal with any threat that might exist beyond this cave.’

‘Yeah,’ Jim replied. ‘Sure was nice of Sulu to dump us in the nearest shelter.’

Spock’s gaze turned to the wall.

‘Unless…’ Jim trailed off, hoping it was enough of a lead to get Spock talking. From the look on his face, it wasn’t. Jim saw the curve of a white Vulcan ear under Spock’s dark hair, not even a flush on his skin from the freezing air. ‘Unless _you_ dragged me through the storm with your Vulcan strength and you were saving that act of self-sacrifice for a moment when you could throw it back in my face?’

‘As that was not a true question,’ Spock said, ‘I see no reason to offer a reply, not even in good faith.’

At least this Spock was more forthcoming with his reasoning. Pissy, too, but Jim figured that the disappearance of the troublesome, intrepid, brilliant, dangerous, handsome Enterprise captain he knew and the appearance of one he _didn’t_ know must’ve had something to do with that.

_Admit it, Spock—you like James T. Kirk more than you’re willing to let on_ wasn’t something Jim could say, if only because his lips were too cold to pull off the rakish charm he needed for that line to work. But he knew enough about childhood fantasies, bad romance storylines, and survival procedures in sub-zero temperatures to know what he _should_ say.

Jim sat with his back against a craggy wall and arched his back away from a jutting spike that’d almost reminded him how not _completely_ numb yet he was. ‘C’mere, Spock.’

Spock turned, only by an increment. Marooned not just in space but in reality, Spock’s impartial and merciless eyebrow was the constant, his hidden judgment always there to be counted on.

Jim grinned. ‘You heard me. I said, get _over_ here. You can check my wounds—don’t worry, I won’t tell Bones I’ve been cheating on him with another health-care semi-professional, and _you_ won’t have to suffer the wrath of Leonard McCoy when he’s feeling territorial—and we can _both_ benefit from the shared body temperature. _Man_ , when I pictured this scenario happening in my mind back in the day, it wasn’t _you_ I was picturing sharing the moment with. No offense.’

‘None was taken.’ Spock’s postured stiffened but Jim had appealed to the logic in the situation, what little of it there was. There was no way for Spock to resist and, true to form, he took the steps forward to close the distance between them, sitting at Jim’s side. He turned Jim’s face away with two fingers at Jim’s jaw—close to the Vulcan mind-meld thing.

Jim realized he was always half-expecting it, ever since _old_ Spock had done it without any damn warning in advance. _Sorry, but this is a lifetime of emotion and history that your puny human brain will barely be able to handle, and you’ll wake up sweating and heaving from your dreams about it probably for the rest of your life, and by the way, we_ do _feel, more than you’ll ever know, and once it gets into you there’s no medicine, no cure that’ll get it out again, but it’ll all be worth it, somehow, this knowledge I’m giving you that’ll change,_ become _, your whole damn life_.

Then, just like that, Spock was inspecting the lump on Jim’s head, fingers carding simply through his hair, resting alongside a sticky spot where the blood had crusted. ‘You are suffering from mild cranial trauma,’ Spock said.

Jim preferred Bones’s less clinical way of phrasing this frequent diagnosis: ‘Well, Jim, it looks like you’re treating your head like the big, dumb melon it is and _almost_ succeeded in cracking it open this time. Congratulations. Maybe _sixtieth time’s the God-damn charm._ ’

‘No kidding,’ Jim said. ‘When am I not?’

‘Security Chief Sulu had intended physical torture, yet he was dissuaded. The lack of time and his eagerness to sit in the captain’s chair appealed more to his sensibilities.’ Spock had located a bruise on the back of Jim’s biceps, not a particularly bad one, and almost immediately after that discovered the real problem, the place where Jim had to believe he’d fractured his spine. The ridiculous captain’s vest inched up, Spock’s fingers pushing the fabric aside, and at least the cold air was welcome on Jim’s throbbing skin. ‘Hm.’

‘Well, at least I’m not dying,’ Jim said. ‘I’ve done dying and this _definitely_ isn’t it.’

‘I was not aware that dying was a thing to be done.’

‘Not that I’d recommend it to just everyone. But tell me the truth, Spock—‘cause I know you can’t lie—am I ever gonna be able to get naked with the lights on again? It doesn’t look as big as it feels, does it?’ Then, because it was innuendo too obvious to ignore, Jim laughed, the sound echoing through the empty cave and disappearing like it’d never been there at all.

‘You are not dying,’ Spock said—confirming the very thing they’d already got past. His touch was cool but firm. Jim winced but didn’t pull away as he probed over the sore spot. ‘It seems more likely that as a result of your conflict with Ensign Chekov, you have inadvertently bruised the vertebrae.’

‘So I’m gonna live.’ The cold touch skimmed down to the dip in Jim’s back where it finally stopped.

There were goosebumps on his goosebumps. It was a miracle he could feel anything at all.

‘That is what I said.’

‘But I’m bruising my _bones_ now.’ Jim just wanted to be clear. That felt like a step up from the usual.

‘From my understanding of your medical records, there was not a great deal of surface area left to cover,’ Spock said. He put his free hand on Jim’s shoulder, pushing him forward before pulling away. All their contact was like that: brief; necessary; limited; _clinical_. Over almost before it started. They weren’t ever gonna get warm that way. ‘Your skeletal structure may have been all that was left untouched to injure.’

‘Well, at least I’m thorough, right?’ Jim settled his boots on the ground, bending his knees toward his chest.

His right shoulder pressed against Spock’s chest—not by design but the necessity of his impromptu examination. He encouraged the contact, leaning forward in slight enough increments that even a Vulcan wouldn’t catch on. He wasn’t about to freeze to death because of his first officer’s stick-in-the-mud personality. _Especially_ seeing as how this wasn’t _his_ first officer.

Also, Spock had a beard to keep _his_ face from freezing off.

The extra contact didn’t make Jim warm, but he didn’t feel sluggish anymore, like his insides were thickening to the consistency of a blood milkshake. Apparently Vulcans didn’t do the whole body heat thing, but two people in close proximity could still make a difference. Jim cleared his throat, then tucked his left forearm around his shin.

‘So…’ Jim let the word echo around the cavern when it became obvious Spock wasn’t interested in playing along. If Jim _was_ thorough, then it wasn’t in a way Spock approved of and therefore he wouldn’t go so far as to acknowledge it. He was a lot like Bones that way. The pair of them had no idea how to make a medical exam fun. At least he didn’t have one of those cold, metal scanners to stick on Jim’s face. ‘What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?’

‘I do not understand the question.’ Spock pushed two fingers against Jim’s spine, then stopped immediately as he hissed in pain.

‘ _Son_ of a _bitch_.’ Jim remembered Spock’s idle hint about the dangers that might exist outside the cave and bit his tongue to keep from shouting. The sound he made instead was wordless and pained, a frustrated groan in the heat of the moment. ‘Never mind, I take it back. You waited to get my guard down, but be honest: you’re torturing me right now.’

Spock withdrew his touch, folding the rumpled edge of Jim’s half a uniform down over his back. The swiftness of it made Jim feel like an asshole, but that wasn’t anything new. He could live with it. He always did.

‘I was merely attempting to ascertain the extent of the damage.’ Now that Spock was finished prodding at Jim like he was a brand new scientific discovery, he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.

‘You could have asked,’ Jim pointed out. Wiggling sideways brought his hip into Spock’s knee right where he’d crouched on the cave floor. Kneeling; meditative. He was _so_ going to be the last man standing—sort of—no matter how far Jim’s natural stubbornness took him.

‘Your response would not have been scientifically accurate.’ Spock was watching him, but he didn’t move away. He didn’t sit down properly and make things easy for Jim, either.

‘I’m _plenty_ scientifically accurate,’ Jim said.

‘‘It hurts like a son of a bitch’ is not,’ Spock replied, ‘scientific vernacular.’

‘Say that again.’ Jim twisted around to see Spock’s face, regretting it when dizziness hit him in the pit of his stomach, right below the navel. He didn’t let it stop him. ‘ _Son of a bitch_ in your voice, Spock... I don’t know; it just makes me feel alive. Like laughing.’

‘You are not my captain,’ Spock said, stiffening all over again, ‘nor are we aboard the Enterprise. Protocol does not demand that I comply with that order.’

‘Next time I meet a Spock,’ Jim sighed, focusing on the shadows dancing over the wall, ‘I _really_ hope he’s a fun-loving wingman. One of those happy Vulcans you never hear about. I like the beard, though. Gonna have to suggest it to my first officer when I get back.’

Jim could practically taste Spock’s tight-lipped disapproval at the wholesale optimism in a statement like that one—without any proof of execution to back the intention up. But just because Jim was stranded on a ball of ice in the middle of deep space didn’t mean he was any worse off than he would’ve been back on the Enterprise alongside Sulu and Chekov and Uhura with the _knives_ and the staring and the _see you laters_ and the eyeballs below the belt, and...

Jim cleared his throat.

‘Might as well get cozy, Mr. Spock,’ he said. ‘Try and keep up body temperature while we’ve still got body temperature to keep up. Pool our resources. Why the _hell_ doesn’t this uniform have sleeves?’

A moment later, Spock’s bare hands were resting on Jim’s biceps. He was kneeling at Jim’s back and, of course, as always, he had Jim at a tactical disadvantage, always three moves ahead of him in the chess game of life.

On the bad days, and there were a few every now and then, Jim stared at the collection of pawns already knocked off the board in the privacy of his quarters, until his vision blurred and he remembered—that wasn’t him. It was good to remind himself of it when he got the chance, since there was nothing like space to make a single officer feel small.

You were only as small as you thought. Otherwise, the sky was the limit. A guy could find _hope_ in all those stars—turn death into a fighting chance at life. Which was all it ever was.

‘Gotta talk to me, Spock,’ Jim added. Spock chafed the skin on his arms until it started to go tingly and Jim realized he was grinning again, part cranial trauma, part lowered inhibitions. When life threw you planetoids, all you could do was make planets. ‘Otherwise I’m going to start getting _philosophical_ , and the last time I did that, Bones had the decency to be enough sheets to the wind at the time, he didn’t remember a _thing_ I’d said the next morning.’

There’d be enough in that for Spock to dissect, keep them both entertained for a while. ‘An expression with which I am unfamiliar,’ Spock said at last, right on cue.

‘Liquid courage,’ Jim said. ‘You’ve heard _that_ one before, right? Wouldn’t be so bad if we had some of it now. Although I’ve been warned about getting drunk with Vulcans. Never fun to be the babbling idiot when the guy drinking with you metabolizes too fast to even get a buzz. No wonder I’ve never seen you smile.’

Spock’s palms halted at Jim’s elbows—any further and they would’ve been, Jim realized, _canoodling_. Outright cuddling, with Spock’s arms around Jim’s waist, his hands on Jim’s hands. The idea sent a rocket flare to Jim’s gut before he could put a lid on the reaction and Spock—Spock who figured things out about as fast as a computer, who knew so much and allowed himself to feel so little, who was so _damn_ smart and so _absolutely_ stupid at the same time—was close enough to Jim’s processing center, his heart, that he might’ve been able to pick up on the echoes, like a shivery laugh that bounced through a cave in the dark.

_Quick_ , Jim thought. _Say something obnoxious._

But there were just too many options to choose from.

‘Is that comparatively better?’ Spock asked.

The last thing Jim wanted—on top of the marooning, and the other thing, the physical attraction, bodies being bodies—was to know that Spock was doing him a _favor_ , of all things, by not making him more uncomfortable than he already was.

‘Yeah,’ Jim said. ‘Yeah, _comparatively_.’ He could feel himself slipping. Anybody else, and he’d have ten—no, _twenty_ lines ready and all lined up, like emotional torpedoes. ‘You’re getting me all hot, Mr. Spock.’

Yeah; yeah, _comparatively_ , that wasn’t one of the good ones.

‘Jim,’ Spock said. Reminding them both of who he was and who he _wasn’t_.

Not the captain. Not even a friend.

‘What do you want, a commendation? I don’t know where they keep the medals.’ Jim made the call for them both. He couldn’t stop being that guy, even if he wasn’t officially in charge here. He leaned back against Spock’s chest, pushing the soles of his boots against the stone floor to leverage himself into Spock’s lap. Because, obviously, when Jim got a hint of something dangerous, he had to run straight for it. No stops, no pauses to contemplate the wisdom of his actions. Just barreling forward into disaster with his first officer at his back.

Not his first officer.

But still a Spock.

Spock swallowed. Jim was close enough to hear it, the wet clutch in his throat traveling deeper. Hesitation was one of the more annoying Vulcan traits. Not just from where Jim was sitting, right now, but _all_ the time. He was convinced they did it on purpose—they had to. Let the other person have a long time to fill in the blanks on what they were thinking; usually something unflattering. They’d drive themselves crazy; all a Vulcan had to do was lift an eyebrow.

‘Put your arms around me,’ Jim suggested, getting in before the insults started flying.

‘You are cutting off circulation to my legs,’ Spock replied.

‘Well, maybe you could sit like a normal person instead of kneeling all the time, Spock.’ Jim leaned harder; he didn’t look back.

It was right there in his file: Jim dealt with adversity by throwing himself against it until it gave way under the assault. Spock wasn’t exactly _adversity_ , but the principles remained the same. Irresistible force; immovable object. Something had to give. Jim was throwing himself against Spock until he got warm or _one_ of them gave way.

Spock made a sound in the back of his throat. It wasn’t annoyed or put-upon because it sounded closer to curious than either of those things. After a beat of silence he started to move, prying his thighs out from under Jim’s ass to arrange his legs into—well, into _something_ that had to be more comfortable to sit on. He crossed one ankle under the opposite thigh and Jim settled back in heavily without being asked. The crown of his head brushed against Spock’s beard, cropped close to his chin. It was weird.

But it was warm.

‘Highly unorthodox,’ Spock said.

Jim could feel the vibration against his back. He let his eyes fall shut—rookie mistake—so that it was a surprise when Spock’s arms descended around him, laced loosely together over his waist, shielding his biceps beneath the cover of his own.

Those sleeves made all the difference. Either that, or Spock had trained himself in all kinds of atmospheres and he was no more uncomfortable now than ever. Regulating his breathing, not feeling extremities; Jim wouldn’t put that past him. Except if he wasn’t feeling the cold, then he probably wouldn’t be doing this. Right?

It was Jim’s turn to talk. Had been for a while.

‘Yeah, well.’ He didn’t have room to make a lazy, illustrative hand gesture. He wiggled his shoulders instead, determined to use Spock like a piece of furniture until he made a stand and spoke up for himself about it. ‘You’re not my crew, right? Everything doesn’t _have_ to be regulation standard between us.’

‘If you fall to exposure here, then it is unlikely your situation will ever be resolved.’ When Spock spoke, his beard rasped against Jim’s hair. ‘That outcome is unacceptable.’

‘If it were me, I wouldn’t be so eager to get your captain back,’ Jim said. It was wrong to pick at that, but he couldn’t help himself. Now that he wasn’t in danger of dropping dead, he had to turn his mind onto other, even less desirable prospects.

It was better that than thinking about how steady Spock was holding at his back, or how he’d managed to get Spock’s arms around him not through a complex chess maneuver but just by asking.

‘My alliance with the captain has always been both profitable and agreeable. Nor can I say, during my service with him, that I ever found myself marooned without warning due to his hesitation to act as logic dictated he must.’ Spock’s breath ghosted over Jim’s ear. It made him itchy, restless; wiggling might be just as much of a pain in the ass for him as it was for Spock, so Jim let it happen. It was Spock’s fault for tickling him, for growing that beard in the first place.

‘So, this captain of yours. He’s a logical guy?’

‘He is...’ Spock paused. The cold _was_ getting to him, because Spock _never_ paused. ‘...capable.’

‘Ruthless, you mean. Despotic. Murderous. Maybe sexy, but definitely evil.’

‘Efficient,’ Spock said.

‘Potato, po _ta_ toh.’ Jim had _always_ wanted to use that line.

‘I am aware of variations in dialects and pronunciations among the diverse human race, Jim.’

‘It’s a song,’ Jim explained. ‘Kind of a cultural thing. You say potato; I say potatoh; let’s call the whole thing off.’

‘The whole thing has already been called off,’ Spock pointed out, and Jim closed his eyes again, falling into the simpler rhythm of his chest as it rose and fell, the simpler warmth of his body that at least maintained consistency—while the breath gusting with every crisp, precise word rifling Jim’s hair and breezing over the shell of his ear didn’t. Spock was supposed to be the predictable one; Jim was supposed to be the firecracker. And that was how the two of them worked together, better than if they were alone. ‘Security Chief Sulu saw to that, by my count, approximately four hours and thirty five minutes ago from our local time.’

‘I always figured it suited the two of us better. You doing things your way; me doing things _my_ way—and how it drives us up the walls sometimes, _most_ of the time, but at the end of the day, you need somebody who makes you crazy to keep you in line. You need that voice, telling you how bad you’re doing. Makes you want to do better.’ It was easier to talk about it with a Spock who wasn’t _the_ Spock, Jim figured. And he didn’t even have to be _a few sheets to the wind_ for it to happen, either, leaning over the table with Bones across from him, saying _Jim, look at me, Jim—if you don’t stop waxing rhapsodic about that pointy-eared hobgoblin first officer of yours, I’m going to...damn it, man, where’re my hypos?_

Jim grinned again. His heartrate was slowing and the ache in the small of his back, at the crest of his skull, were fading—dull, distant memories, something that’d happened to somebody else, not as quick on the draw, not as _immortal_ as he was.

Even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t true. It was a trick of the cold and the cold was pulling him under. Spock wasn’t exactly as hot as Vulcan, now was he? And the silk of his blue jacket, the medals of dishonor on his chest poking Jim’s shoulder blades—none of that was enough to tug Jim back into consciousness. He was slipping.

Spock’s hands tightened, his mouth against Jim’s ear, the bristles of his beard unexpected—not painful, but not something Jim could ignore, either.

‘Stay with me,’ he said, his voice deep. Another flare answered it in the pit of Jim’s stomach and suddenly his adrenaline was racing, like back on Nibiru, ground rumbling, volcano about to blow, and Spock down there, at the heart of the detonation, surrounded by lava, not knowing what it’d be like—a galaxy that didn’t have him in it.

Jim’s eyes opened. Spock’s hands chafed his until Jim could flex his fingers, knuckles pushing into Spock’s palms.

‘I’m with you, Spock,’ Jim said. ‘Not gonna lose me _that_ easy.’

Dying had sobered him up. But there was part of the way Bones treated him now that suggested it’d _also_ made him cocky.

_You think the rules don’t apply to you. Even after you know the consequences. You’re going to be impossible these next five years, you know that?_

Yeah, Jim thought, but he hadn’t ever said it. Impossible’s what they had to be.

Spock’s fingertips were layered over Jim’s, pad to knuckle. Something in the back of Jim’s brain slotted into place, bouncing back from where it’d been knocked loose by the two meat tenderizers Cupcake called his hands.

‘Hey now,’ Jim said, ‘don’t Vulcans kiss with their fingers?’  

He didn’t have to wonder what was in his own personnel file back in the parallel universe. _Good captain_ he could hope for, but _likely doomed by his own big mouth_ was on there for sure.

The joke was on those guys, though. They didn’t have any idea what’d really kill Jim in the end. It was a weird thing to get smug over—but these days Jim was taking what he could get, thanks.

Spock’s fingers twitched over Jim’s like he wanted to pull away but couldn’t—or wouldn’t. That Vulcan honor of his was a powerful thing and it wasn’t about to let him watch Jim freeze to death. Which was all right by Jim, better than all right, but that didn’t mean he was about to let Spock off the hook for it either.

‘There are many ceremonial traditions once observed on Vulcan that have since been lost,’ Spock said.

‘That’s not an answer.’ Jim rubbed his knuckles insistently against Spock’s fingertips, brushing the fine golden hair that grew on his fingers the wrong way, then the right way again.

‘With regards to intimacy, our customs have never been well-known to…outsiders.’ Spock halted, then found his voice again. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Observing ceremonial tradition that might not be as lost as some people think,’ Jim said.

Really, it should’ve been obvious. Spock was losing his touch. Not _literally,_ because Jim could feel it, neither warm nor truly cool anymore. His hands against Jim’s were impossibly still, like he thought if he just wished hard enough he could be touching Jim without _having_ totouch him. The Vulcan mind was a powerful thing but even Spock couldn’t will himself into being Schrodinger’s body heat. Both there and not there; able, but not willing. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Spock’s breathing turned labored, a deliberate attempt at grounding himself. Jim had never caught his own Spock at Vulcan meditation rituals but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen. The things Jim didn’t see weren’t for want of looking.

‘That is not the purpose of this arrangement,’ Spock managed to say. And yeah, Jim was getting to him. That much was obvious.

Hopefully what was _less_ obvious was just how quickly he’d gotten to himself.

‘Something’s gotta get your cold blood going.’ Sure, that made sense. It sounded nice and even logical. ‘Otherwise how’re you gonna keep me warm, Mr. Spock?’

Jim was thinking clearly for the first time since he’d beamed up to the wrong universe—and the first move he made was to slip his fingers out of alignment with Spock’s, running up alongside and between them. That had to be some kind of bad decision record. Or maybe it was a good one; Jim honestly couldn’t tell. The cold made it tough to think and as clear as his thoughts were, they were coming in slow.

Spock’s chest rose and fell beneath his back. Jim could tell every time he took a breath and every time exhaled. The tiny falters when he started to speak, then thought better of it.

‘It is not necessary to recalibrate my internal temperature,’ Spock said. At some point, his head had dropped, chin dipping to brush against Jim’s temple. There was that beard again. It wasn’t as rough as Jim had thought. Spock’s fingers tightened around his, stopping him flat, no longer just holding him steady, but also holding him still.

Jim couldn’t feel Spock’s heartbeat but he sure as hell felt his own, hammering away like it’d been left out in the cold and now it wanted back inside again before it froze up for good.

‘…Have I failed to keep you warm?’ Spock asked, into the quiet and over the howling wind outside. His grip was tight, like he thought if he loosened it for a second Jim would work his way free.

Or maybe he just needed something to hold onto.

‘As make-outs go,’ Jim said, ‘I’ve had steamier.’

Whether it was on purpose or by accident—and most of the time it was six of one, half a dozen of the other—Jim always knew how to get a rise out of Spock. Maybe not old-Spock, but his Spock, and beard-Spock, too, and awesome-wingman-Spock, wherever he was, making _some_ Jim’s life a whole lot better than it had any right to be. But the thing was, Jim’s heartbeats chattering like his teeth weren’t anymore, there was something to the fact that he couldn’t imagine any universe, parallel or perpendicular, fantasy or all too real, where _a_ Spock _wasn’t_ a part of the equation. His equation.

Sure, Jim had used that line before, more than once, more even than his fair share. _Hey, what happens when you put one and one together?_ And the answer he gave was usually _three, because your friend over there is smoking hot, and we shouldn’t let her feel left out, should we?_ But the truth was, the right answer was another little joke.

One and one equaled one, illogical as that might’ve sounded.

Or _fascinating_ , which was what Spock’d have to say about it.

But Jim had managed to ruffle Spock’s Vulcan beard just enough that Spock’s hands had tightened, that the rise Jim had gotten out of him was more literal, _physical_ , than it had been for a while. It wasn’t an eyebrow lifting, but Jim could feel Spock’s body with his own, and the difference in their positions, the way he’d wormed his way into Spock’s arms and lap, made it impossible to ignore the ways they were making each other react. Spock’s fingers closing around Jim’s wrists made sense—and not in the _you’re cold and you don’t have sleeves so I’m going to keep your arms warm_ kind of way. In the cosmic way.

Damn, Jim hated being cold.

Being warm brought its own problems, but at least the problems felt good while Jim was causing them. Acknowledging the major shitstorm impending and letting it affect your fun in the present were two different things; Jim knew how to keep actions and reactions in separate compartments for exactly this reason, otherwise there’d be no joy in anything, and that was no way to fly.

He wanted to love it. He had to love it. There was nothing he loved more. And it wasn’t despite his fear or because of it because they existed together. One and one equaling one.

‘Your mind is racing,’ Spock said.

‘So’s my pulse—but I thought you didn’t waste time pointing out the obvious.’

‘Regardless of a surface familiarity, we do not know one another as you seem to imply. Mirror images, perhaps, but nothing more.’ Spock’s lips were on Jim’s ear and Jim had to believe he was doing it on purpose, because if he wasn’t, then Vulcans deserved to rule the galaxy and everyone else could just pack up, cash in their chips, call it a loss, and go home now, since there was absolutely no way they could _ever_ get one up on that kind of natural killer instinct. Straight to the gut and deep into the spine—which also happened to be the way Jim liked it.

‘You’re not exactly like the guy I know. It’s the beard. Not exactly Federation regulation there.’ Jim’s breath caught as Spock’s hands moved his hands lower, between his legs; the spike of internal temperature the moment there were four sets of five fingers touching Jim’s _serious_ hard-on in the situation was, _shit_ , logical, more logical than wasting energy with banter. ‘And that is _definitely_ not by the book.’

‘Not by any of your books, perhaps,’ Spock said.

‘Vulcans have books about this kinda thing?’ Spock ran his thumb over the seam in Jim’s Empire standard super-tight black pants and Jim hissed a wheezy breath, white on the air in front of his lips. ‘Shit. I need to get to know more Vulcans. Not that I don’t already have my hands full,’ Jim squeezed Spock’s fingers and Spock answered by rocking his hips into Jim’s ass, ‘with the one I’ve got now.’

‘You believe you have me?’ Spock sounded hoarse, but restrained; intrigued, but in control; there was deeper meaning in his voice but also, probably, his eyebrow was up because Jim had a habit of making him _bemused_.

God, he was playing the long game. Letting Jim think he was pushing when all along he was just walking right into his trap. Well—maybe not a trap, but judging by the slow, thoughtful drag of his fingers over the bulge in Jim’s pants, Spock wasn’t as locked up about this as Jim thought. Or, if he had been, he’d come around _real_ quick.

‘Let’s—let’s say I did.’ Jim leaned heavy into Spock’s lap and was rewarded by another insistent push. He’d never given too much thought to Vulcan anatomy below the waist. Spock wasn’t kidding when he said they kept their stuff to themselves, but Jim was _pretty sure_ he knew what it felt like when someone was hard for him. Those things were universal. Something that allowed them to understand each other, if only in the briefest of moments. ‘Just for interest’s sake, say that’s what I believe. Are you gonna correct me? And how would you— _shit_. How would you go about doing that, Mr. Spock?’

Spock’s breath was hot against his neck. He released Jim’s right hand, getting his own around Jim’s cock and giving it a firm squeeze. Something gripped in Jim’s chest, made it hard to breathe. He was sweating and somehow his sweat wasn’t freezing into icicles on his skin.

‘The question is both illogical and rhetorical.’ Spock thumbed over the waist of Jim’s pants, then slid his hand down them.

Jim’s whole body jolted. But he still had control of his mouth. ‘Dirty talk _usually is_ , Spock.’

Against the heat of Jim’s erection trapped up against his abdomen, the difference in their skin was more pronounced. Spock _was_ colder, cutting through the impatient throb of Jim’s pulse as his fingers worked their way along the shaft to the head. When Spock’s thumb slipped over his slit, already sticky with leaking precome, Jim groaned.

Spock stopped. Damn it; of course he stopped. Right on the dime. Like it wasn’t anything. ‘Your injuries…’

‘Don’t even feel ’em.’ The words tumbled out in a tangled rush with Jim slurring his consonants in an effort to talk fast enough that Spock would get his _hand_ going again. ‘That was a good sound, Spock. Good, good—humans, you know, sound like we’re dying when you get us just right. Just like how Vulcans act like they hate you when _really…_ ’

At some point, he’d twisted his free hand into Spock’s sleeve over his biceps. The grip gave him leverage to thrust into Spock’s hand, digging himself back against Spock’s hips in reverse.

‘Hm,’ Spock said. Like Jim had just tossed him an interesting word problem on the bridge of the Enterprise. _If you can solve that one by the time Scotty gets us moving again, drinks are on me next time we’ve got shore leave._

‘ _Hmmm?_ ’ Jim tightened his hold on Spock’s arm, rolling his hips in rough, deliberate circles like he’d made up his mind to pioneer the galaxy’s first Vulcan lapdance. Yeah, sometimes he _was_ an asshole, but he didn’t have much incentive to change. Not when _this_ was what he got for it.

‘Fascinating,’ Spock elaborated.

Without warning, he stepped up the pace, abrupt and _totally_ in charge, fingers and palm spreading slick friction over the delicate skin of Jim’s cock, running his thumbnail along the big vein at the base lightly, too lightly. He was merciless, fingers teasing around and against the sensitive head, finding the places that made Jim jerk and curse and bite the inside of his cheek before he’d relent, the touch sliding once more to the base of his erection. It shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise. Vulcans were hand experts. This was kind of their thing. Jim had all the context clues ready and available but he’d never come up with this equation before. Self-preservation tactic, probably. Even he had a little of that.

So maybe this Spock did belong here. He had the whole _no surrender, no mercy_ thing down pat.

The movement of Jim’s hips turned shaky, with no real backbone of rhythm. Spock bit the shell of his ear, rolling the cartilage between his teeth. Jim came with the first wet pulse of tongue soothing over the sore, soft skin and his gasp was downright _un-captainly,_ muscles twitching with the urge to contract and release at the same time. Spock was still hard against his ass where Jim landed in his lap.

‘C’mere.’ It was barely a word. Jim felt breathless and also possessed, like the hands tugging at Spock weren’t his own. They’d come this far without looking each other in the eye, but Jim was past the point of propriety now. They didn’t have to be regulation with each other. Not his Enterprise, not his officer. ‘I want you to sit on my face. _Fuck_.’

Jim didn’t know what he expected. Spock’s laughter; whatever passed for Vulcan snickering. Mostly he was waiting for more of the same silence, this time with the _implication_ that underneath it all Spock was thinking _humans_ and rolling his inner Vulcan eyes, or regarding Jim like a faulty piece of equipment that spat out answers to questions it hadn’t been asked. Like if Spock had leaned down to give instructions to one of the bridge computers and it’d responded in retro twenty-first century rap lyrics.

God, Jim loved that stuff.

He loved the shaky feeling, anti-gravity at its purest, of coming down from coming. Only Spock was still hard and he hadn’t laughed, hadn’t arched an eyebrow, hadn’t even moved, his hand still wrapped around Jim’s dick, already gone soft, dirty as _fuck_. Fuck. There was that word again and what could Jim say? Spock inspired him. The best and the worst parts of him, making everything bigger than it already was. And not just in the double entendre kind of way.

Jim’s brain had almost caught up with his mouth in time to wonder if Spock had frozen like this—if death was the moment that came after getting a Vulcan handjob, and if so, there were honestly worse ways to go—when Spock let go of him only to grab him again, this time with his palms on Jim’s shoulders. He turned Jim around like it was easy, like all the jockeying for position of a clumsy one night stand was unnecessary in superior beings because they could work you the same way they worked a geometrical proof, plot you the same way they plotted the distances between stars. Jim _felt_ like a star, that was for sure, one that’d just gone supernova, and what was left was the dust echoing with the memory of light.

Or something like that.

He didn’t slam into the ground, although there was enough force and strength behind Spock’s arms that it would’ve been easy—and Jim wouldn’t have minded it, not in the moment, even if later there’d be bruises on the bruises on his bruises to worry about. For a second, while he saw Spock’s lips parted within the dark crop of his beard, the flush of green on his cheekbones and around the tips of his ears, he figured he’d gone crazy. It’d finally happened. The last wire snapped and now here he was, Spock leaning over him, casting a long, lean shadow that shifted when he...

‘Fuck,’ Jim said again, but softer, and with a reverence he couldn’t take back. Spock had undone the stiff leather belt around the waistband of _his_ Empire standard super-tight black pants, tugging it free of the loops, letting it fall open with the silver buckle glinting. And he was touching himself with the same hands he’d used on Jim, the same long, capable, _logical_ fingers taking care of things on the home-front. Jim was looking at Spock’s underwear, at Spock’s dick; as surreal as the first part was it had _nothing_ on the second, because Spock’s dick was flushed green too, pale hints of it deepening closer to the veins and so much darker around the head, and it shouldn’t have been hot but of course, _of course_ it was.

Cultural exchange. New worlds. Strange bedfellows. Boldly going where no man had come before—and Jim almost laughed, before he realized _not now, asshole, anything but that, don’t laugh at the guy’s dick, he’ll take it the wrong way_ , and instead he swiped his tongue over his lower lip.

The universal sign for _I want to put that in my mouth_.

Vulcan or not, the half-human part of Spock would get that. It was wired into them, somewhere in the belly, connected to the base of the spine. When you pushed the right button, the magic happened.

So yeah—Spock figured out what Jim was saying-without-saying. After a moment’s pause, his eyes on Jim’s lips, he settled his weight, his lean thighs, on Jim’s chest, spreading his legs wide over Jim’s ribs, the underside of his cock brushing Jim’s mouth.

‘Holy,’ Jim said, aimless, neck tightening, mouthing around just so he could really, _teeth_ , yeah, ‘ _Spock_ ,’ and Spock’s whole body shuddered, his thigh muscles clenching, practically squeezing all the air out of Jim’s lungs.

Jim wheezed again. The gust of hot air over Spock’s dick made his whole body do this spasm thing that Jim wanted on his tombstone. _Gave such great Vulcan head he was too good for this mortal coil_.

He got his hands on either side of Spock’s hips and slide them around to his ass, coaxing him forward so Jim could swipe his tongue over the head of his cock, slipping it past his lips into his mouth. He held it there, encompassed in warm, slack heat, waiting to see who broke first.

He could feel the fine trembling in Spock’s thighs where they sat braced against his chest. Jim squeezed his ass. He would’ve grinned if he could, but any movement spoiled what he was going for. It was an effort to look up, meeting Spock’s flushed gaze with his own innocent look. Well, as innocent as a guy _could_ look with a dick in his mouth. There was a grading curve.

Spock’s nostrils flared.

Jim ran his tongue out along the underside of the head of his erection. The second he put some suction into it Spock slipped forward like Jim had knocked him boneless, pushing past the tight seal of his lips. It was the closest Jim had seen _any_ Spock get to losing control, even for a second.

It wasn’t the best angle for leverage, but he didn’t need it the more Spock shifted his weight forward, pinning Jim flat under his spread thighs and arching into his mouth. He touched Jim’s face, fingertips skimming the bone that framed his right eye before pushing into his hair. It wasn’t quite regulation standard length anymore. Five year missions didn’t leave much time for personal appointments. Spock took full advantage of that, tangling his fingers where it was longer at the front and pulling, sudden and tight. Jim’s eyes watered.

Scratch what he’d said before: this wasn’t the best angle if he wanted to keep in charge of the situation, but it was pretty perfect for Spock to fuck his mouth. He had all the leverage now and Jim was at the mercy of those hips.

He’d given up tactical advantage without even realizing it. Stupid, _rookie_ mistake.

Easy to make when you got too greedy or too reckless, though, and no one could blame him for that. Jim couldn’t even work his way up to being sorry, not that he’d tried very hard. All his energy was focused around the controlled thrust of Spock’s erection, head grazing the roof of Jim’s mouth. He scrambled to remember the little stuff—like how to breathe—kneading Spock’s ass with one hand to keep him steady.

They worked their way up to a rhythm, not bit by bit, but out of necessity. Because Jim was going to choke if Spock went any faster or any deeper or, and this was the big one, any _messier_. It might’ve been easier if he’d just admit how bad he wanted it. If he’d let go then they could get something sweet going here, a proper push and pull, Jim’s mouth tight and slick around the shaft of Spock’s dick. But of course Spock was still holding back—for his own reasons, or Vulcan reasons, or maybe a little of both—whatever. It was always something. The forward tug of his hips into Jim’s mouth was just instinctive response, his body overriding his brain.

Jim didn’t have a problem with that. He could win over that big, sexy mind later.

But he had to admit the _quiet_ was a little weird. Jim liked to—well, he liked to talk. See if he could get a rise, keep up a rapport that the other person couldn’t. It just seemed like the friendly thing to do. But _friendly_ had never been Spock’s first concern. His fingers kept their hold in Jim’s hair, making slight adjustments to the tilt of Jim’s head. He had to admire that, in a freakish kind of way—it took _guts_ to micromanage your own blow job.

Guts, focus, attention to detail, strict self-discipline that never let up for more than a _second_ —and those were anomalies, something Spock was still trying to iron out the same way cadets fresh out of the Academy thought they needed to keep their pressed gray suits wrinkle free.

Nobody’d ever given Jim enough to work with that he found himself grasping at metaphors, _especially_ not when there was action going on at the same time.

Needless to say, Spock was different.

And not _just_ because his dick was green. Jim had done green before; blue, too, a couple of times, and yellow once. And some kind of ivory with purple freckles.

Experience after experience; Jim had taken more than one guy’s fair share. All of it paled in comparison to this, even its littlest moments. The jagged rocks underneath his shoulders, his head, the mostly-frozen stalagmites dripping in the distance; Spock’s pattern of breathing, which was the closest indication that he _did_ feel this, more than Jim could _possibly_ know; the uneven pulse in the vein against Jim’s bottom teeth, not letting up for an instant, but when it was coupled with the flexing and tightening of Spock’s fingers in Jim’s hair, it started to give him the tools for translating Morse code a la Spock. A new dictionary to work with, but Jim was good with his tongue, quick to learn, always the top student in the class. Not necessarily every teacher’s favorite, not at the start. But eventually, yeah.

Jim did this backwards thing with his tongue, the one a graduating upperclassman with a prehensile tail and whiskers had shown him his third night at Starfleet Academy—and that was it, it had to be. Nobody could resist the catgirl swirl. Not even Spock.

He learned he was right about that the roundabout way when Spock’s fingertips slipped from Jim’s temple to the side of his face. They slotted against his cheekbone and in the space lateral to the occipital lobe, _yeah, Jim Kirk passed his anatomy and biology class, and no, that wasn’t a pickup line_. Spock’s hand fit there. Jim knew from experience, but it’d been a while, and this time was a new time. Same hands; different meld. It wasn’t done carelessly or without forethought because even when he was coming, Spock was keeping tabs on himself. Measuring his behavior, making sure it all added up. No one plus one equaling one in his world.

So he was doing the mind-meld thing on purpose. A nasty, dirty, below-the-belt, _mean_ little trick that sent Jim gasping, reeling, panting, in no position to swallow, from the force of its impact. He was able to forget there was anything in his mouth—and after that, he realized why: because Spock had pulled free to bring himself over the edge. He was the only person he trusted, apparently, to do that for him.

Because like he’d already said—they were strangers. Mirror images, but nothing more than that, of the people they supposedly knew better. The people who were theirs, in a not-psycho-possessive manner of speaking.

‘You play dirty, Spock.’ Jim’s voice sounded like it shouldn’t have, husky, sex-rocky, and also totally fucked. It sounded good but it also sounded breathless, a concession he’d made unconsciously and now, he couldn’t take it back. Spock was hearing him at his most raw. Considering Spock had also fucked his mouth raw, it shouldn’t have mattered—except for the part where it did. Funny how Spock was the most logical person Jim knew; funny how that only made all their interactions _illogical_ by association.

_Fascinating_ , Jim thought.

Yeah, still giddy from the mind-blowing mind-meld orgasm.

But not dying from hypothermia yet. So there was that.

‘You do not appear to play any less dirty, Jim,’ Spock replied.

They’d both gone below the belt—although one of them had done so more literally. Jim licked his lips again, watching Spock tuck himself in, buckle his belt, body missing the heaviness, the weight, as Spock resettled by his side.

‘An eye for an eye, huh, Spock?’ Jim’s brain was going to the dark place again, not that it was too different from where it always was, if you asked Bones. This time, Spock didn’t snap him out of it. He was there at Jim’s side, not too warm, not too cold, an arm draped around his waist. Possessive, even—if Jim could read into it like that—which, if that _was_ where it came from, then: _hot_. He spread his fingers over Jim’s stomach and the after-shocks of two epic orgasms echoed through Jim’s muscles. He struggled to get the punchline in, before he passed out. ‘S’a good one,’ he managed. ‘Hammurabi. _Wasn’t_ killed by his own people. Better quote.’

Then, there was darkness, the kind that crept in with the clouds, unbroken by starlight.

*


	3. Chapter 3

Jim woke up warm and there was no one pressed against him.

Neither of these things was a first by any means, but they didn’t make sense _here._ Something soft and heavy was covering his upper body but it wasn’t Spock—if only because neither of those descriptions applied to him, first of all, and Jim couldn’t feel him breathing, couldn’t hear his steady, Vulcan heartbeat.

Okay, so he’d taken to following the time-honored rules of the traditional one night stand way better than Jim could’ve predicted. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise; everyone knew Vulcans were cold bastards, and this one had apparently grown up in a universe where _cold bastard_ was just the baseline of common decency.

Still—the blanket was a nice touch. It crinkled when Jim rolled over, like it was made of something stiffer on one side than the other. The light from last night had been extinguished, so he couldn’t tell for sure without sitting up and making a fuss.

Clearly, Jim was gonna have to be the bigger guy here, just to keep things from getting _weird_.

He cleared his throat, about to call for Spock and see if he’d managed to rustle up some breakfast—maybe brought down whatever was howling in the wind out there with one of his famous Vulcan nerve pinches. But there was hushed conversation taking place nearby and, while it wasn’t a language Jim could translate on command, it still made his ears prick up, stirring his brain from where it would’ve been content to stay asleep.

Was that… _Vulcan?_

‘He is awake.’ One of the shadowy figures moved, switching into accented standard. ‘But wastes time pretending not to be.’

‘I did warn you.’ _That_ was Spock. Jim wasn’t proud of the relief that flowed through him at the sound of a familiar voice, if not exactly the sight of a familiar face. ‘He is a particularly illogical human.’

‘I do not understand your purpose in returning him to his own dimension.’ A third voice, male. ‘He could be a valuable ally here—even lacking the ruthless will of his counterpart.’

‘Hey now,’ Jim rolled over and sat up. If he was gonna get insulted, he at least wanted to look them in the eyes while they did it. It wasn’t much of an improvement—they were nothing but a pair of hooded silhouettes, made bulky by their survival gear. Jim knew they were in there, though. Judging him. ‘I’ll give you _illogical,_ but you’re saying I’m not a murdering lunatic like that’s a _bad_ thing. I’m not gonna take that from… From anyone. Spock, who are these people?’

‘Agents of New Vulcan.’ Spock was kneeling on the cave floor, bundled in a thick parka that beat Federation standard hazard gear by a long shot. Closer inspection revealed that Jim had one of his own, although he’d been using it as a blanket. ‘My associates. When we were marooned, I activated the distress signal kept hidden on my person for exactly this type of scenario.’

Jim rubbed his eyes, then his forehead. ‘Pretty sure I never saw a distress signal on your person. And I was—’

Spock cleared his throat.

Jim didn’t say _thorough_.

One of the Vulcans pulled down their hood. She was—wow, okay, _way_ older than Jim had been expecting. Gray hair and cheeks that’d probably been round once, but were now closer to drooping. _Rocking_ the eyeshadow, though, like being a three billion year old Vulcan couldn’t stop—well, a three billion year old Vulcan.

‘As one of the few Vulcan members of the Terran Empire, Spock is much valued among our people,’ she said. ‘There are measures in place to keep him from falling to…misfortune.’

Somehow, it wasn’t a huge shock. Spock was a total badass wherever he came from. It wasn’t Jim’s style to think of people in terms of assets, but if anyone _was_ one, it was probably him. He was a hell of a first officer. And, apparently, a hell of a Vulcan. Much valued among his people. Jim’s hand shifted to his neck, rubbing a knot that’d formed from sleeping on a bunch of rocks for a pillow.

‘You could’ve told me the cavalry was coming.’

‘I could not be certain that the message had been received,’ Spock said. That was it. All perfectly logical.

Jim shrugged into the jacket, swallowing down the dull aches and pains in all the sorest parts of him before they could gather and turn into a fully-formed wince. What he wouldn’t have given for one of Bones’ hypos right about now—although he could never let Bones know about that. Had to protect Starfleet from the hypo-happy doctor a confession like that one would create. The idea made Jim shiver despite the jacket, which was the type he liked: warm with a furry collar and hood deal. Finally the no-sleeve period of his time outside _his time_ looked to be over for good.

‘So,’ Jim said, flipping the furry hood up around his ears, ‘aren’t you gonna introduce me to your friends, Spock?’

The old woman leveled him with a gaze that put the Koballyashi Maru situation of yesterday to shame. She was old as time, sure, but her eyes were sharper than they had any right to be. After a moment, her tall companion removed his hood, and Jim realized that the rescue party consisted of one Vulcan grandma and one Vulcan man with a face only a mother could love.

And not a Vulcan mother, at that. To do so would be _way_ too illogical.

Then, the old lady held up her hand. Jim knew that symbol. It was a feel-good moment, something he had to rise for. He stood, ignoring the stiffness in his lower back, the muscles seizing up at his shoulders, all the little scrapes from the improvisational warmth tactics he’d engaged in with Spock earlier on.

Was that something the rescue party could smell? Jim wasn’t sure if their sense of smell was as advanced as their hearing—although knowing his luck, it probably was.

‘Because, I mean, you already know my name.’ Jim held up his hand—he’d practiced getting his fingers in the right position without the help of glass and a guiding touch showing him how it was done and nobody’d caught him at it yet—and if any of the Vulcan party approved _or_ disapproved of his attempts to return the sentiment, Jim would never know it from their passive, measuring expressions. They were like emotional black holes. Whatever they took in never made it out again. ‘So, you’ve got me at a disadvantage. Multiple disadvantages, I’d say. Thanks for the jacket, though.’

‘He is talkative,’ the male Vulcan said.

‘Indeed,’ Spock agreed. Maybe it was just Jim, wishful thinking, lack of Vulcan renegade experience, but Spock was stiffer than usual. Or maybe it was the cold, enough to freeze his temperature sensitive blood to little green icicles.

‘This is Stonn and I, T’Pau, James Tiberius Kirk of another earth.’ _T’Pau_ , Jim thought without mouthing the syllables, as much as he wanted to. It certainly was a mouthful. And if he’d ever thought that _Spock_ was an unfortunate name then apparently, at least by Vulcan standards, the guy was actually one of the lucky ones. Less fortunate was Stonn, whose face matched the name he’d been given: shovel flat, the eyebrows doing nothing for him, eyeshadow standing out—just not in the good way. ‘Thy injuries are not severe?’

‘No, no, they’re—’ _Exacerbated by the excellent sexual acts recently participated in with your much valued Vulcan, but other than that, I can still feel my legs._ ‘—I’ve seen worse. Way worse. They’re fine. ...Ma’am.’ _Shit_ , Jim thought, but he’d had less adequate showings. As long as he could approximate _charming monkey_ , that was the closest he’d get to a Vulcan liking him enough to acknowledge he existed at all. ‘So,’ Jim continued, forging ever bravely on, ‘I couldn’t help but overhear you when you were saying something about returning me to my rightful place in the time...space...parallel universe?’

‘The shuttle awaits,’ Stonn said.

‘Indeed,’ T’Pau agreed. ‘And a storm approaches.’

‘Then we leave under the cover of the blizzard, and remain undetected by the Enterprise’s scanners.’ Spock glanced at Jim—brief, too brief to count, too brief to impart _thanks for the blowjob, it was fascinating_ , with eyes dark as the storm in question—and just like that, he’d looked away. ‘To see the destruction of Halkan from the skies.’

Whoa, okay. Back up. Jim officially had worse problems than his personal ones and they were all coming back to bite him in the bruise above his ass. All this time he’d been feeling sorry for himself because he was chilly—well, freezing to death was closer to the temperature—while the Halkans had spent the night knowing their twenty-four hours were running out and they were about to be wiped off the surface of the planet. _Their_ planet. This galaxy.

Jim was gonna have to call that cluster headache forming between his eyes the _Terran Empire._ He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then higher, trying to talk himself into what he was about to say. He had to say it. Somebody did. ‘That’s unacceptable.’

Stonn looked confused, then infuriatingly superior. Neither expression suited his face—but then, it was a tough face to suit.

‘To hear a human express such sentiment over the eradication of another race is,’ Stonn said, with a momentary pause, ‘refreshing.’

As Vulcan adjectives went, refreshing wasn’t so bad. Jim could work with refreshing.

‘It would complicate the means of thine escape,’ T’pau said. Jim was _pretty_ sure he followed that. They’d studied the classics in school and if he cast his head back to _shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?_ then it was almost like having a built-in mental dictionary.

‘It has been established that, if we were to employ the Enterprise computer’s records of Montgomery Scott’s research, we should be able to recreate the effect of the ion storm on the transporter room—the same one that interfered with your displaced materialization.’ Spock was looking at Jim again, but it was distant, like he was facing a whole lecture hall of first year cadets and it was the period before lunch. ‘This would be the simplest and most efficient way to return you to your universe and restore the captain to this one.’

‘And Bones,’ Jim said.

‘Naturally,’ Spock replied, ‘as I can think of nothing more unsettling than the prospect of Doctor McCoy in duplicate.’

Jim went over the variables. There were more than a few. Sneaking back onto the Enterprise was risky enough in and of itself. Then they had to get to Bones, who couldn’t keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it, _then_ to the transporter room with Bones and his mouth, and all of that had to happen without incurring the wrath of Newly Self-Appointed Captain Sulu. That was a big team to move from point A to point B in hostile territory. And the Enterprise was huge, but she wasn’t exactly empty.

With Jim’s luck, Spock’s operatives knew about a secret meditative stealth art that’d keep them swathed in the Vulcan shadows, but Jim wasn’t _exactly_ used to keeping a low profile. The last infiltration he’d done had been alongside Scotty and Khan.

It hadn’t gone well.

So it was crazy to want to add more to that, right? To throw in some last-ditch attempt to save the Halkans from being another footnote in the glorious Empire’s logbooks—they didn’t have the time and they didn’t have the manpower. Jim had washed the no-win scenario out of his system already. He couldn’t beat everything and he couldn’t always win. This wasn’t even his universe to save. When he got back, he could treat the Halkans he knew extra nice, just to make up for it. Give them the grand tour. Look them in the eyes and know they were safe, their pretty homeworld thriving, their dilithium mines still under their control.

That was the _right_ thing to do. It was the safest decision for him _and_ Bones. _Especially_ Bones. None of this stuff was his call to make in the first place.

‘Can I contact med bay from your shuttle?’ Jim asked.

Spock’s eyebrow raised in the midst of his otherwise tranquil face. Now that was creepy. It definitely wasn’t the signal Jim needed, encouragement that he was on the right track. ‘You wish to inform Doctor McCoy of our arrival?’

‘No, nothing like that.’ Jim could feel the beginnings of a rush of a adrenaline spiking straight through his central nervous system, banishing his headache and soothing away the buzz of his injuries. He was gonna pull this off. He was—he _would_. ‘I just wanted to remind him… Security Chief Sulu was looking awfully worn-down the last time we saw him, don’t you think, Mr. Spock? I think he could use a visit from the doctor. Maybe a hypo or two.’

If Jim hadn’t known better, he would’ve sworn that Spock’s lips twitched at one corner, infinitesimally higher than the other. But it was just a trick of the eerie planetoid light, another echo in the darkness.

‘C’mon, Spock,’ Jim added. If anybody needed the encouragement, it was this guy. No Vulcan, no cozy Enterprise family, no Uhura to kiss him and make it better—definitely for the best of all parties involved if Jim didn’t think about _that_ —but he was _Spock_ , and the situation wouldn’t sit right with him. Not only because it wasn’t logical. ‘Conquering’s easy—when you have bigger guns. But once you’ve wiped out planet after planet, the ones you _haven’t_ blown to smithereens _probably_ won’t want to suffer the same fate. There’s only one logical outcome for that kind of tyranny. How long do you think this Terran Empire can even _last_?’

‘By my estimation,’ Spock replied, ‘no more than another fifty years at the most.’

Jim’s grin had to have looked as punch-drunk as it felt. Literally punch drunk, thanks to Cupcake. ‘That just doesn’t make _sense_ , Mr. Spock. Pursuing a course that’ll only lead to ruin? That sounds crazy to me.’

‘Does it,’ Spock said mildly. Not even a question.

‘Ask your Vulcan buddies what they think about the situation.’ Jim couldn’t look over his shoulder to corroborate; chances were he’d meet nothing but stony eyes and smoky eyeshadow and a whole lot of nothing else. ‘Once you _really_ think it through all the way, you’ve _gotta_ understand that throwing your lot in with this empire business... It’s just bad tactics. You ask me, the Vulcans _I_ know are _way_ too smart for that.’

‘Not many of those Vulcans remain among the living, Jim,’ Spock said.

Jim knew better than to think Spock didn’t feel something about that.

‘Enough of ‘em do.’ He pointed the accusation straight at Spock, using everything he’d learned about the guy from playing chess with him the past few years. He was going to have to thank old-Spock for the gift of the set for the Enterprise way back when. It’d really helped—although Jim could’ve done without the part of the lesson that made him feel like a ham-handed Gorn in the brains department. ‘The ones that count. Just think about it. That’s all I’m asking.’

‘I intend to,’ Spock replied.

That was the closest to a rousing cheer of solidarity Jim was going to get from Vulcans, especially _that_ Vulcan. Hope sprung eternal, but it could do the springing while Jim was in motion.

‘Either way, I’ve gotta get back to my Bones,’ Jim added, as Stonn led the way out of the cave. A full blast of icy air hit Jim square in the face, reminding him all too intimately of Cupcake’s powerful left hook. He turned his hood against the direction of the wind and, before he could stop himself, stepped in front of Spock to take the brunt of the temperature shift. The cold affected Vulcans. There were things, little things, _captain_ things, all over—and they didn’t stop being Jim’s job when he wasn’t in the chair. _Bones_ was whipped clean from Jim’s mouth, breath immediately freezing the moment his lips parted, shocking his lungs when he tried to draw it back in again. The name itself got lost in the storm, snow frosting Jim’s lashes. He thought about Spock with an icicle hanging off his nose and it warmed him up from the inside out. ‘The rest depends on how lucky we are.’

‘I do not believe in luck, captain,’ Spock told him. He had to draw close to be heard. _That mouth was close to my ear last night_ , Jim thought, but he’d learned restraint. He didn’t need to say that out loud for both of them to know it.

‘Better find something else to believe in, then, Mr. Spock,’ Jim said.

They boarded the shuttle. T’Pau, of all people, was flying.

At least Bones wasn’t there to barf in Stonn’s lap.

It was the little things, Jim told himself, and strapped himself in.

*

Vulcans, Jim knew from experience, weren’t the chatty type. Stonn meditated during takeoff. Spock did the same. T’Pau didn’t, but she was flying, and Jim was grateful for that.

In the silence that marked their short trip, Jim tried to use the lack of external distractions to his advantage—but that wasn’t how he operated.

Some people solved problems inside their head but Jim couldn’t work like that. He had to solve them outside his head, directly at the source. Even Bones, peppering him with scans and cranky conversation, provided the sounding board Jim needed to untangle some of the bigger problems.

Of which this was one of the biggest.

‘Ready to beam aboard?’ Spock was standing, shadow falling over Jim as Jim bit his thumbnail.

‘No,’ Jim replied, ‘but that’s how I like it.’

Spock gave him a look. It definitely wasn’t fascinated. More like _resigned,_ or resigned’s less frustrated cousin. Was there a word for that? The only person Jim could ask was the guy making the face at him. _That_ figured. It was the kind of luck Jim’s life seemed to thrive on from beginning to end—then beginning again.

He didn’t have much time to dwell on the riddle. One second he was looking up at Spock and the next they were beaming, atoms scattering across space to reconstitute in the cargo hold of the Enterprise. It was just the two of them, layered up for bad weather that didn’t exist anymore. Jim missed the cozy atmosphere of the cave—even if it’d almost been a cozy tomb.

‘Just you and me?’ Jim glanced around, keeping his voice down.

‘Stonn and T’pau will board if and only if we are able to secure them a landing point,’ Spock replied.

Which was the polite, Vulcan way of saying they’d be backup if Jim’s crazy plan happened to work. If it didn’t, they’d be free and clear. They’d heard what Jim said about the Empire, too; maybe they’d get a chance to spread it around.

Spock unstrapped a black bag from his shoulders, pulling out a phaser and tossing it to Jim. It was set to stun.

‘They _will_ shoot to kill anyone who has been disavowed by the Empire,’ Spock reminded him. ‘Currently, you and I both qualify as targets.’

‘That’s great, Spock.’ Jim leveled his phaser, testing the aim before he started forward. ‘Really uplifting. You should be a recruiter, give a speech before every away mission. _We’ll probably die here._ ’

‘That is not what I said.’ Spock followed the quiet path Jim cut through the crates and shipments, supplies for the Enterprise as well as materials for transport. The door was locked with a basic level-one security key and Spock got a tricorder out of the bag next, hacking the system.

‘Well then,’ Jim said, ‘I guess what we have hereis a breakdown in communications.’

The door hissed open and he stuck his head out, wary of patrolling redshirts. When there weren’t any on either end he nodded them forward, only to be stopped by Spock’s hand on his shoulder.

‘Be careful, Jim.’

For a second there, Jim could’ve sworn he’d coupled it with a blast of friendly fire, a stunning blow catching him right between the shoulder blades. But there was no sudden twist, no last-second, epic betrayal. Jim should’ve seen it coming. Spock was allergic to misunderstandings the way _Jim_ was allergic to—well. At least a few known vaccines.

He just had to make things clear.

‘Yeah, that show of camaraderie doesn’t exactly make me feel any _less_ like we’re about to die, Spock.’ Jim shook it off, loosening his shoulders.

And then they were in.

Of all the things he’d done since landing in this new, terrible reality—and he was counting some vivid, not-so-lonely-planetoid-specific memories in there—sneaking around his own Enterprise had to be the strangest. He let Spock take out the first two guards they encountered with the nerve pinch and the third Jim managed to sneak up and get a chokehold on. Phasers were a precautionary measure; they’d work, but they’d be loud. And for them to have the best, brightest shot at Jim’s plan succeeding, they needed to use stealth to their advantage.

They had it—but it was something Bones almost blew for them the moment they slipped into sickbay. Spock dropped the unconscious body of a hapless engineer they’d run across just inside the door on a cot.

‘Jim!’ Bones rushed him and grabbed onto his arm, hard enough to cut off bloodflow. Maybe he was gonna amputate, take it as a souvenir for the next time Jim took off. Like a lucky rabbit’s foot, only creepy. ...Creepier. ‘You’re—’ He cut himself off, gaze traveling to Spock. Almost immediately, all the lines in Bones’ face deepened, like someone had taken his head in both hands and _squeezed._ Jim still remembered Khan’s demonstration of what that looked like. Bones was the spitting image.‘Now hang on—this is a medical office, not a garbage disposal. And where in the hell have _you_ been, you pointy-eared devil?’

God, it was a long story. One Jim might not even be persuaded to share when there was a bottle of Romulan ale between them and a long night of incriminating conversation ahead. Jim swallowed, grinned the grin Bones hated most in the world, and said, ‘You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you where he’s been, Bones.’

What Bones didn’t know wouldn’t make the vein in the side of his head explode. It was for his own good, really.

‘My suspension of disbelief hasn’t exactly been running low lately, damn it. Why don’t you _try_ me?’ Bones glared at Spock; Spock pointedly didn’t glare at Bones. And Jim might’ve been reading too much into the situation, but Spock _did_ let his focus rest on Bones’ hand for a moment, his fingers tightened around Jim’s arm, like _he_ was reading the situation. What he’d read, though, was anybody’s guess. And Spock didn’t care for guessing games.

‘We were marooned after Sulu’s neat little mutiny. Could’ve been killed, but Spock managed to wrangle _stranded on an icicle_ for us instead. Nice job with that, by the way. I owe you one, Mr. Spock.’ Jim knew he was navigating treacherous waters—between Spock’s piercing gaze and Bones’ mistrust, he was selling two completely different products to two completely different species. Even if it didn’t succeed, it was still a challenge, still something new. Hard, but it _could_ be worth it. ‘Anyway, it took some work, nearly froze to death a couple of times between the two of us, but it turns out Spock here has more friends than you’d give him credit for, Bones. And here we are. So now _I’m_ the one who can’t believe you’re still in one piece,’ Jim said.

Bones snorted. ‘Well, if there’s _one_ thing power-mad _murderers_ need, it’s a good doctor on their side for when _they_ end up on the wrong side of a phaser. And speaking of being on the wrong side of a phaser—Jim, orders on the bridge right now are to _obliterate_ the Halkan homeworld.’

‘Yeah.’ Jim swallowed. Obliterate was such a permanent word, the only bargaining chip of despots and dictators. ‘I’m aware of that.’

‘I’m never going to forgive myself for asking this,’ Bones continued, ‘but what the _hell_ are you planning to do about it, Jim?’

Bones looked pained by the position he was in. As far as Jim was concerned, he needed one of own hypos. But Bones’ practice of medicine skipped the _physician, heal thyself_ side of things and, on more than one occasion, played fast and loose with the _first do no harm_ part, too.

It was good to have him back. Or good to be back; whichever it was. Jim clapped Bones on the arm. ‘Funny you should ask me that, Bones.’

‘Funny,’ Bones repeated. ‘ _Real_ funny, or _your_ definition of funny?’

‘Somewhere in between. That is, if Spock has decided on whether or not he wants to cooperate. And I think he might just.’ Jim grinned again; this time, it was the Spock-specific grin, not the one he’d developed for Bones. It had a different bite, a different heat behind it. ‘If I read my Spocks correctly.’

Spock’s eyebrow went up.

It was what Jim knew.

‘I was just thinking, as the resident doctor, you might consider helping Suddenly Captain Sulu out with a dose of something peaceful, after all this excitement he’s been through.’ What better way to deal with a madman than during his naptime? Jim did his best to look confident, sincere. Like a captain. _The small things were what counted most._ ‘Then, while he’s out, _Spock_ takes control of the Enterprise while _we_ use Scotty’s transwarp records on the ship to beam ourselves back.’

‘Now why didn’t _I_ think of that?’ Bones always got snappy when he got rhetorical. ‘Oh, wait—I’ll tell you why I didn’t. Because it’s goddamn _insane_. I’m a doctor, not an engineer!’

‘You’re an engineer now,’ Jim said. ‘And so am I. At least for the next fifteen minutes.’

‘Indeed.’ Spock’s voice was so familiar but so unexpected that Jim felt it before he heard it. And where he felt it was a new development, but maybe not as surprising as it should’ve been. _Fuck_ , Jim thought again. This time, when he grinned, it was for himself. ‘Yet that does not address the fact that I am a first officer, and not a captain.’

‘I _hate_ it when you two do that,’ Jim said. ‘When you guys _agree_ with each other. Makes me feel like _I’m_ the cold-blooded one.’

‘Sometimes,’ Bones muttered. ‘ _Sometimes_.’

‘Listen,’ Jim said. He had to think fast. These were two of the most powerful minds in the galaxy standing in front of him. When they _allied_ themselves toward being a huge downer on his plans, Jim had to get out from under them quick, before they crushed him. ‘Bones, I don’t wanna hear it. If _I_ can engineer then you can at least pretend you’re up to the challenge too. Pretend the Enterprise is your latest patient, I don’t know—it works for Scotty, don’t think I haven’t heard him talking to her. And _Spock_ …’ This was the hard part. It was always tough, gearing himself up for the big finish. The problem with speeches, with overriding your crew’s desires in favor of the mission, was that it always came with a certain amount of inherent sacrifice. There were things Jim had to give in order to get back from people. He couldn’t be flippant all the time.

Spock had a way of demanding sincerity. And it was honestly pretty annoying.

‘I am listening,’ Spock said, ‘should you discover an end to that sentence.’

The _mouth_ on that guy. It was Jim’s favorite part of him and he’d never even got the chance to experience it up close and personal. If that was his only regret in all this, he could probably call it a win, and not even necessarily Pyrrhic.

‘You’re gonna do fine, all right?’ Jim touched his arm, palm to tense biceps. He hoped Bones was paying attention— _this_ was how you touched someone without making them feel like the last piece of turkey at Thanksgiving. ‘I don’t know how that other Kirk ran things, but on _my_ ship, first officer’s practically captain anyway. You know what you’re doing better than I do half the time.’

‘If that statement is meant to convince me of the superiority of your alternate reality...’ Spock began.

‘You can _do_ this, Spock.’ Jim thumped him in the shoulder. He’d wanted to do that for awhile, though he couldn’t be sure Spock wouldn’t slice his hand off until now. ‘That’s _all_ you need to be convinced of. Trust me. I’m an expert. I’ve met, like, _three_ of you guys now.’

‘Indeed,’ Spock said.

He didn’t look thrilled or even the _tiniest_ bit intrigued. Of all the Spocks Jim had met, this one seemed the most pragmatic, the least possessed of a healthy, scientific curiosity. Maybe that was what living life under the Terran Empire did to a Vulcan.

Or maybe he just didn’t like being third.

‘I wouldn’t put the Enterprise— _any_ Enterprise—in the wrong hands, all right?’ Jim could be sure of that, if nothing else. ‘You’re ready. _You_ work out a deal with the Halkans, _you_ get their dilithium crystals, then all of a sudden _you’ve_ got a big one over the Empire. That kind of power _might_ just attract other rogue elements to your cause.’

‘…The strategy is not without merit,’ Spock conceded.

‘Now, _wait_ a minute,’ Bones said, ‘ _Devil-beard_ here gets a whole inspirational climb-every-mountain _speech_ and all _I_ get is a shut up and do your job? That’s preferential treatment, Jim, and not in the direction it ought to be going, either. Where’s your sense of loyalty, man? _I’m_ the one who’s about to go tranquilize a tyrannical madman with delusions of command.’

‘You’re gonna do just fine too, Bones.’ Jim gave him a sturdy whack in the shoulder with his free hand.

For a second, the three of them were joined with Jim in the middle, touching— _almost_ connecting—two opposing forces. Holding onto them for all they were worth. A guy could get fried pulling a trick like that in engineering.

But he wasn’t an engineer just yet.

*

Even if he was no Montgomery Scott, it was still something else, something special, to watch Spock work.

Especially since Spock had the Vulcan nerve pinch going for him and Scotty didn’t.

Spock dropped the last of the now-unconscious crew in engineering without even batting an eye—or giving Jim enough time to feel sorry for Keenser, who hadn’t seen them coming in time to clam up, or whatever it was his species did for a self-defense mechanism. Had to be something to explain why the little guy was still alive.

‘Damn,’ Jim said.

It was his last chance to appreciate the whole bad-boy Spock _deal_ , with the crisp jacket and the hard mouth and the straight line of his back with the slightest arch at the small, emphasizing his ass. Plus, there was something more complicated to his ruthless efficiency: a heat, not a tenderness, but a puzzle, that Jim was starting to look at as an extension of his nearest-to-fatal personal flaw. _The Kobayashi Maru Syndrome_. It figured Spock had been behind the test because he was behind the _this_ , too. Whatever it was.

No time for any of that, not anymore. Jim’s whistle of appreciation for the way Spock worked—and the way Spock looked while he worked—was a quiet, hollow thing, too soft to be heard in even an echo. And as for its reception, Spock was already at the transport pad, reprogramming the same coordinates that had occurred above the Halkan homeworld a day ago.

If they were lucky, there’d be enough latent ion storm energy lingering in the atmosphere to put everybody back where they belonged.

If they weren’t lucky, their options ranged anywhere from ‘scrambled egg people’ to ‘one foot in and one foot out’, or simply ‘stuck in a parallel universe with External Inertia Dampeners Made Me Want Revenge On Everyone Sulu’. The last one wasn’t good, wasn’t right, although it might’ve had a couple of perks that weren’t beyond mentioning. Cleaning up an entire galaxy that’d gone over to the bad side wasn’t a job for somebody who didn’t already have a massive ego problem. Without any other commitments, Jim would’ve been the first to volunteer.

But Jim’s crew needed him. It didn’t need Evil Other Jim—as much as Jim would’ve liked the chance to meet another version of himself for a change. Somebody he could understand better than hundreds of Spocks, or at least have a friendly arm wrestling match with.

‘The coordinates are now set as they were upon your arrival on this ship.’ Spock’s voice cut through Jim’s Spock appreciation moment just like he’d cut a swath through the engineers. There was something about the way he spoke, even when he was on the wrong side of moral law, that practically _sang_ with the moral fortitude of the prime directive. Jim couldn’t change things here. At least, not any more than he already had. It wasn’t his place to change. Spock, on the other hand... ‘Though it goes against all principles of logic to apply an error to another error in the hopes that a correct outcome will be achieved—’

‘Two wrongs don’t make a right, you mean.’

‘—Nevertheless, it is our best option.’ Spock looked up from his calculations. Jim felt sweat prickle at his temple—only _partly_ because he was thinking about Bones attempting subterfuge with a photon canon happy Captain Sulu. Bones attempting subterfuge at all was the scariest thing about this place—and the Terran Empire would never know it.

‘Thanks,’ Jim said.

‘It was logical,’ Spock replied.

‘You know, sometimes I wonder about your definition of that word.’ Jim licked his bottom lip, the mirror image of something he’d done for Spock before. ‘Like if you say logical when you mean desirable, or necessary, or, I don’t know. _Sexy_.’

‘To do so would be _illogical_ ,’ Spock said.

‘Illogical can be sexy, Mr. Spock,’ Jim told him. ‘So can logical.’

He’d learned that the hard way.

Spock regarded him with the same intensity he had in appraising a ship or computer malfunction. Jim didn’t have coordinates, faulty or otherwise, for Spock to recreate. Sometimes he was more than a hundred percent certain Spock knew that. Other times, not so much.

‘It _was_ sexy,’ Jim added, feeling stubborn. Spock’s fault, though it wasn’t logical, either. ‘Just saying.’

‘A statement of fact, or a compliment?’

‘A little from column A, a little more from column B.’

If he started a list of all the things he was worried about now, he’d never get to the end of it. Bones; scrambling his eggs in the transporter; his own crew stuck with a psychotic Jim Kirk _and_ a mad scientist doctor; the Halkans here; the Halkans there; Vulcans everywhere. It was too much for one guy—and Jim didn’t have that much extra space in his head to begin with.

So—he was left with what he always had. Action. Fighting chances. Gut instinct. Doing what felt right, or felt good, or simply _felt_ at all.

And this, _Spock_ , was something Jim could feel.

He leaned around the corner of the transporter control console and pressed his mouth over Spock’s, catching him in a kiss. It was tough to feel like _anything_ was ever a surprise to Spock and his Vulcan sensibilities but Jim knew he had his moments. Now could be one of them. He’d been accused of predictability through unpredictability before—only this Spock hadn’t had a chance to get to know him that well yet.

If they were just reflections, mirror images of other people they’d known, then this was Jim’s last chance to really get one up on him.

And besides, they’d only got as far as _Vulcan_ kissing in the cave.

Spock’s breath hitched, a gasp easily hidden under Jim’s hungry mouth. That was all Jim got, a hint that maybe he wasn’t the _only_ one going crazy every time they got too close, before Spock moved to regain the higher ground. His hands settled on Jim’s hips, twisting their position and pushing him back against the wall. The impact winded Jim but of course, _of course_ Spock didn’t let up, biting the chapped corner of Jim’s mouth, swiping his tongue over the sore, swollen curve of his upper lip.

Jim liked being in control nearly as much as he liked being out of it, which was lucky for Spock, since he didn’t seem half as accommodating.

‘You sure like holding me down,’ Jim murmured, words hardly words on his occupied tongue.

‘You talk too much,’ Spock replied.

The kiss turned harder, more fervent, as if to discourage Jim from attempting to reply. It was hard to believe he’d ever been cold on that barren planetoid with the way he was sweating now, chin and mouth tingling with the added friction of Spock’s beard. He squirmed, trying to get a better angle, which was about when Spock _lifted_ him against the wall, holding him pinned without a shot at better leverage.

What a goddamn _control freak_.

The door to the transporter room hissed open; Jim’s boots hit the ground. His face was damp and suddenly cold. He could barely see over Spock’s shoulder where he’d turned abruptly, half-shielding Jim from the intrusion.

‘Acting Captain Sulu’s out like a babe in arms.’ Bones, tucking a hypo into his sleeve. Jim wasn’t so sure he didn’t fit into this world after all. He’d have made a top-notch doctor-assassin. ‘Except what _I_ gave him is a hell of a lot more effective than rubbing gin on teething gums. He should stay out of your way for enough time to get negotiations going again, uh, Spock.’

Then, Bones paused, taking in the scene. Jim pressed his lips together, going for serious but also _hey, nothing swollen or bitten up here._ He tugged at the hem of that stupid vest, adjusting the sash. If he was looking a little redder in the face than usual, well, he could blame that on traveling around a warm ship after nearly freezing his ass off on Sulu’s planetoid of choice.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Bones said. ‘You two were trying to kill each other, one last round, for old time’s sake. No, I said _don’t_ tell me. I’ve had just about enough excitement for one day, gentlemen.’

‘Are you suggesting any more might finish you off, doctor?’ Spock asked.

‘I didn’t _say_ that.’ Bones rounded on him. ‘Don’t get any funny ideas just because _we_ got your number one enemy out of the way for you.’

Seriously, Jim thought. Where was the other-Spock out there in all the galaxies in all the universes that’d be a better wingman than Bones turned out to be? And what were the odds they’d ever get the chance to bump into each other, seeing as how Jim already had the market on multiple Spocks cornered?

‘Now, I know I said the captain’s out, Jim, but there’s no telling how long my _lullaby’s_ going to last,’ Bones added. ‘Might as well get this shot in the dark over with _before_ I lose the nerve. _And_ my lunch.’

‘You had lunch?’ Jim’s grin was what it had to be: something for Bones’ sake. Too bad they didn’t have any time to share one more for the road. A toast to what might’ve been. There was plenty of that for more than one lifetime. ‘No _wonder_ you’re in such a good mood.’

‘Doctor; captain.’ Spock had taken a step back, standing by the controls. He was so sure of himself. He made it look so easy.

‘That eager to get rid of us?’ Jim asked.

It wasn’t exactly what he’d wanted to say.

‘I do not believe I expressed anything of the sort in my statement or its accompanying tone,’ Spock replied. ‘It is merely time for you to go.’

‘Yeah,’ Jim agreed. ‘No time like the present.’

A little regret might’ve been nice, Jim thought. A flush of green under his cheekbones. A hesitation of _any_ kind. But then again, if there had been, it wouldn’t have been Spock. Jim touched the corner of his mouth with the tip of his tongue where the faintest razor burn was going to bug him for an hour, tops. After that, the friction would be nothing but a distant memory. Something that happened on the other side of the looking glass.

If you wanted to get poetic.

Jim didn’t.

‘Long _past_ time, if you ask me. Tear this damn fool plan off like a bandage—make it quick, and _maybe_ we won’t _feel_ it when we’re _ionized_ ,’ Bones said.

Now there was another kind of poetry, the kind Jim was a part of. He stepped up onto the transport pad backwards, tugging his sash one last time. If they were going to do this, then they were _always_ going to do it right. 

‘You’ve got this, Mr. Spock. Take care of our ship,’ Jim said. ‘Make sure T’Pau gets first dibs on the bridge, while you’re at it. Have her replace that nasty Security Chief, even. And don’t let my, uh, other self give you any crap, either.’ 

‘I had not planned on it.’ Spock paused. ‘My operatives will do what is logical, when presented with the possibility of an asset like the Enterprise.’

‘Just...treat her like she deserves, Spock,’ Jim said. Then, because he had to, he lifted his hand, palm out. It was starting to come naturally to him, the spread of his fingers, the shape his hand could make, but also the meaning behind it. And he didn’t want to think about the meaning behind the meaning.

Across the transport room, Spock raised his free hand—a mirror image, in a manner of speaking.

‘Yeah; I’ll do my best,’ Jim said. The grin he had on was for Spock. ‘Already died once. Living long and prospering seems _way_ better, by comparison.’

_You too_ , he added. Mouthed it. Spock would see; Bones _might_ see. But it was better than saying goodbye by a long shot.

Then, Spock threw the switch. The flash of ionized lightning made the hairs on Jim’s arms stand on end, and in the long, sickening pause between definite places, Jim could literally feel his atoms being broken down, scrambled up, and reassembled. There was a moment, more like a few moments, ugly and nauseating, when those atoms lost focus and started to scatter, and Jim knew Bones was going to be going on about it basically for the rest of their five-year mission, while the worst part of it was, Jim couldn’t exactly blame him.

They were on the bridge. Jim’s bruises had bruises and his captain’s shirt had sleeves. Spock was standing behind the controls looking all Spock-like, no beard, and Scotty was there, sweating, and Keenser was conscious, impassive, like a great big oyster that said _home sweet home_.

Maybe Jim’s brain was still out there somewhere, space-scrambled, taking a few seconds longer than the rest of him to catch up. The piece of himself he’d left behind.

‘Damn, captain,’ Scotty said, ‘and here I was hoping ye’d not make it back—I swore off drinking for the next thirty-five years if only my calculations were correct!’

‘Well now, why would you go and do a stupid thing like _that_ , Scotty?’ Jim stepped off the landing and down the steps, one foot in front of the other. He had to make it look easy.

When he didn’t pitch forward—when his knees didn’t buckle and send him face-first into the floor—Jim figured his brain had come through in time after all.

Bones knocked him in the shoulder, managing somehow to give Jim a thorough once-over as he rushed past. Unlike Spock, green wasn’t a color that suited his skin.

‘All right there, Doctor McCoy?’ Jim asked.

‘ _Lunch_ ,’ Bones roared back.

He clipped Spock on his way out, stirring an eyebrow raise of his very own, and Jim grinned. He couldn’t help himself.

‘Captain.’ Spock turned the eyebrow on him; the grin was like a homing beacon. ‘I trust the transport was not too rough.’

‘Excuse _me_ ,’ Scotty said. ‘If it was anything, the transport was _just rough enough_ , thank you!’

‘Just Bones being Bones, Spock.’ Jim rubbed his own arms, crossing them loosely over his chest. He’d never appreciated sleeves so much in his life until he’d stopped having them. If there was a lesson to be learned in all that, then the closest thing to it as far as Jim was concerned was, _don’t ever let dictators tell you what to wear_. ‘…You look different without your beard.’

‘Indeed,’ Spock said. ‘You are also absent a few of the more notable traits displayed by your counterpart.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Jim was curious despite himself. After all, the stuff _he’d_ got up to with another Spock…

Nah. There was no way. No way in cold Vulcan hell, Bones would’ve said.

‘I believe at first many of the crew believed it was Khan’s blood affecting your personality at last.’ Spock folded his hands behind his back. ‘It was only when several anomalies in the impostor’s memory became apparent that we were able to isolate the incident and determine what had happened. To say nothing of the complaints from McCoy’s sickbay.‘

‘Wait,’ Jim said, ‘ _what?_ You’re telling me you thought that was _me_ acting all crazy?’

‘Just for a wee spell,’ Scotty said. ‘You don’t just jump right to alternate realities until someone starts blabbing about the almighty Terran Empire, do ye?’

Keenser blinked impassively. Even that cut like a betrayal.

‘I would be interested to hear your side of the experience,’ Spock said, intercepting the conversation before Jim’s outrage could carry him to distraction. ‘Perhaps later. In your quarters.’

There was nothing off in his tone; it was no deeper or more serious than usual. But something about it stirred Jim’s memories. He was all too clear on what’d happened last time he was alone in a room with Spock.

He couldn’t _tell,_ right? That touch telepathy thing…that only worked with touching.

‘Och, captain, maybe you’d better go to sickbay after all. You’re lookin’ a little feverish,’ Scotty said.

‘Yeah.’ Jim nodded, tearing his eyes away from Spock before good, commanding eye contact shifted into an outright staring competition. ‘Yeah, I’ll catch you later, Mr. Spock. I’ve got some good stories for you.’

The funny thing was: Jim didn’t even have to exaggerate. He’d just have to watch the details.

...And maybe reevaluate his standard landing party for cold climate missions. 

**END I**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spock and Jim will meet (and smooch) again.


End file.
